Catherine Mulroney is a double alumna of the University of St. Michael’s College and now serves as the
university’s Editorial Manager. She is almost ready to begin describing herself as a lifetime learner.

I’ve said it before and now I’m saying it again: I’m heading back to school.

Come the fall I’ll be working part-time on a Master of Theology (ThM) degree at the Regis St. Michael’s Faculty of Theology and I couldn’t be more delighted.

The first time I returned to school was 2004. I had four children at home, a busy freelance career, a full volunteer calendar, and a husband often described as a happy workaholic. Adding school into the mix was perhaps the most counter-intuitive thing I’d ever done.

My mother had died the year before and her death had given rise in me to many deep questions about life, as well as some surprising insights into my own beliefs. This was all so out of character that I felt called to do something about it. I decided I needed to study, without a clue as to what to expect. I assumed I’d get some questions answered, put in my time to earn another degree, and then return to my regularly scheduled life. My experience, however, was anything but.

Accepted into the Master of Theological Studies (MTS) program at St. Michael’s Faculty of Theology, I registered for two courses in the fall semester. Just weeks after my return, though, the occasional indicators of dementia my father had been manifesting turned into a full-blown crisis. Suddenly, school was not just something I did but a place where, for four hours a week, I could escape some inescapable pressures and responsibility, pouring myself into courses that at once allowed me to disconnect while also offering insights into how to handle my father’s illness. Weekly liturgies in the gorgeous Basilian Centre chapel offered respite and a way to shore up my emotions in a turbulent family time. I carved out reading time late in the evening. My studies became at once a safe space and an instruction manual into how to cope with life’s big issues.

As my father’s illness progressed, I yet again opted to swim upstream, switching my program from a 20-credit Master of Theological Studies degree to a 30-credit Master of Divinity (MDiv) degree. Every time I looked at the course catalogue there were more offerings than I could fit into my original plans, and I realized that the MDiv, with its pastoral focus, was really the degree I’d been looking for.

I could easily imagine myself back in the classroom and the Kelly Library, but I hadn’t anticipated all the value-addeds my time studying theology held out. I began to conquer a fear of public speaking that had arisen, unexpected, as an undergrad. The field placement requirement of the MDiv introduced me to my parish RCIA program. I agreed to run the program, thinking it would be a year-long commitment. Instead, I fell in love with the experience and continued running the program for another 10 years. And when it came time to return to the workforce full-time, I could place myself in one of the country’s smallest professional niches – a journalist with theological training.

It wasn’t always easy being in school at this point in my life. It took me six years to complete my degree, but I assure you – every second was worth it.

Thinking back on my MDiv experience, perhaps the most surprising thing about being back in school was the community I found myself in. I had been worried that I would be the oldest person in my classes but I was met by an impressive range of ages and experiences and soon found my own way to fit in because by its very nature – and its purpose – theology is a place where everyone fits in.

When it came time to place my father in long-term care, I was able to consult a professor of Catholic ethics on how to fill out the obligatory medical intervention form so that it would best reflect Dad’s wishes.

There was the invitation to a classmate’s ordination, an experience that left me unexpectedly teary-eyed when I watched his own ailing dad, very close to death, help his son don his vestments.

And when my husband died after a brief illness, several years after I graduated, I was beyond touched to look out at his memorial service and see not only former classmates but also Faculty staff and professors who had taught me. This community was still with me, and I was still a part of it.

Now here I am, 20 years after my first return to school, glancing through the course catalogue once again. Much has changed in the interim. Widowed, with just one adult child still at home, my time is freer. St. Michael’s Faculty of Theology is now the Regis St. Michael’s Faculty of Theology and the one online course I took, then deemed an experiment, has given way to a great deal of online learning, post-pandemic. Some of the professors with whom I studied have retired, while there are some new faces to get to know. And this time, I have a clear objective: to write a thesis on the negative impact social media can have on Catholic discourse.

Some things, though, will remain the same. Undoubtedly, rather than offering pat responses, my courses will open new avenues of thought and will leave me with even more questions than when I started. I can assure you that, when I graduate, the Trinity will still be a mystery. And that’s all okay, because now I know that the study of theology is open-ended, a lifetime occupation.

This time, I am heading back to school with my eyes wide open. My heart, meanwhile, is prepared for surprises.

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Visit the Regis St. Michael’s Faculty of Theology website.

For alumna Sabrina Hyde, serving as a mentor through St. Michael’s new AMPlify program is a great way to give back and reconnect with her alma mater. “I decided to become a mentor because I felt disconnected,” Hyde said while attending the AMPlify launch party in early October. “I know I would have appreciated something like this when I was a student. It would have been nice to have someone to talk to about work-related concerns.”

Hyde graduated with a BSc (Hons) in immunology and cell and molecular biology in 2017, then completed an MSc in molec-ular genetics and, finally, earned a master’s degree in public policy from the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy at the University of Toronto.

Today, she works as a policy officer for the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission. Her path took her in a different direction than she had imagined in first year, a reality that she thinks would be useful for students and recent graduates to hear. She also imagines a place for herself in advising women working in male-dominated fields.

One of the students Hyde chatted with at the launch party was Rayan Awad Alim, a 3rd-year computer science student who came to the launch because she’s considering her options post-graduation and is thinking about doing consulting work.

I’m here to see what the program is like and what it has to offer,” she said. “It seems like a really useful idea.”

The response from curious students and mentors “exceeded our expectations,” says Karina 

Stellato, who is Campus Life Coordinator and a member of the team who is behind the project’s launch. Since October, there have been 142 mentee registrations, with 61 recent grads, as the program is open to graduates as far back as 2020 and 81 students.

The initial AMPlify meet-and-greet was abuzz with student participants and many of the 56 alumni members who signed up to serve as mentors. Attendees wore colour-coded name tags to make it easier to find others from the same field and interests, allowing students to put faces to interests and taking a bit of the awkwardness out of the initial introduction. An appealing spread of snacks and beverages also helped create a relaxed mood.

What mentors and their pupils are entering into is not the standard experience, says Stellato.

Students have secure access to a protected directory of mentors where they can see career details and watch brief introductory videos. Mentors and students are not matched up in advance but students are encouraged to connect via email or LinkedIn to any number of people on the roster, Stellato says. This broadens students’ choice and allows them to reach out for a variety of reasons. 

While some will want to speak with someone directly employed in the student’s chosen field, mentees may also want to connect with a mentor who built a career far from home, or even to someone who graduated without knowing exactly what their career path would be.

Mentors, who have between five and 15 years’ experience, work in a broad variety of fields, including those that fall under STEM education (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math education), teaching, law,  consulting and various roles in the civil service.

From the mentor perspective, meetings are intended to be casual — a quick coffee, perhaps, or an exchange over LinkedIn — rather than a formal schedule of meetings, and email advice is happily welcomed. Should mentors find themselves receiving more requests than their schedule allows, they have the option of having their names hidden on the secure list, being added back as time allows.

There are plans to expand the program as it settles into place, Stellato says, and there will be other social events planned throughout the year to allow students and mentors to get together as a group.

St. Michael’s Magazine plans to check in with participants throughout the year to offer a sense of this exciting new program and how it is panning out. Should you wish to become involved, please check stmikes.utoronto.ca  in June, when we’ll be accepting a new cohort of volunteers. 

This article was originally published in the 2023 Fall/Winter issue of St. Michael’s Alumni magazine.

On first glance, a doctoral student, a university administrator, a lawyer, and a high school teacher might not have a great deal in common on a day-to-day basis. But four alumni who came together recently to talk about life after graduating from the Christianity & Culture program at the University of St. Michael’s College were bound together by their respect for the program, as well as for the people teaching in it, noting that their studies gave them a unique lens through which to view the world. 

An added dimension to the alumni panel, held in the Basilian Fathers Common Room, was the fact that three of the four participants went on to advanced theological studies, and so attendees were given a great idea of how C & C meshes with further theological studies, as well as what to expect at the graduate level. 

Alumna Therese Hassan, for example, credits her time in both the Christianity and Culture program and St. Michael’s Faculty of Theology, where she earned a Master of Theological Studies degree, with helping prepare her more effectively to meet the needs of the secondary students she teaches today. 

“Our students yearn for a connection to their faith and not every teacher they encounter has had the experience that I’ve had,” Hassan, who teaches for the Dufferin Peel Catholic School Board.  

She describes her time at St. Mike’s as “super valuable,” allowing her students to have a different experience in her class because she is able to speak with confidence about topics such as the teachings of the Catholic Church and sensitive moral issues. 

“My theology degree allowed me to grow and build on what I had learned in Christianity & Culture by taking a more in-depth look. And while my C & C classes were small and allowed me to participate, my theology classes were even smaller. I am confident that when my students tell me they have a different experience in my classes it is due to my own academic experience,” Hassan says. “Theology courses were so in-depth that they really allowed me to grow.” 

Patrick Nolin, a graduate of the Christianity & Culture program now engaged in doctoral studies at Regis College also cites small classes as helping him become more involved in his classes – an area of study, incidentally, in which he had never intended to become so engaged. 

“I didn’t know I’d join C & C because I was into history in high school and that was my planned major but then I took a first-year seminar course on Catholicism and that was it, hook, line, and sinker,” he laughs. 

One of the aspects of the program he really appreciated was how its interdisciplinary nature helped create new lines of study, noting, for example, the growth in eco-theology that has taken place since the days he first encountered the subject area in his undergraduate years. 

“Christianity & Culture taught me to figure out what questions that need to be asked,” he said, adding he often uses the transferable skills gained in his undergraduate years. Communicating to a small group, for example, has been a help both the past work in sales and his current life as a doctoral student. 

Panelist Andrea Nicole Carandang found herself unable to imagine the experience of many of her university peers, who spoke of impersonal classes of 300 students, given the seminar-like size of many of her C & C classes. There, she found the ability to enter into conversations with her professors and her peers, allowing her to gain the confidence to debate respectfully and to tackle life’s most challenging questions.  

She recalls, for example, that in 2015 when the Truth and Reconciliation Commission report came out, she was struck by an awareness that, “My faith was big part of the residential school system,” she says. 

But she adds, as she delved deeper into the impact of the TRC report she comfort in a lesson she says she had learned again and again as a C & C student. 

 “It’s not wrong to ask hard questions,” she says. 

Carandang, who returned to Toronto to work on a Master of Divinity degree at Regis College, says she often uses the skills and experiences gathered in her student years in many ways in her current role as Administrative Assistant in the office of the President of Regis College, from the practical work of doing research through to brainstorming to resolve numerous challenges that arise. 

C & C grad Adam Giancola, who is now a lawyer, says “education is for life,” adding that an interest in canon law  from his C & C days, for example, was one of the factors that played into his decision to go to law school. 

He deeply values the time taken in his C & C classes to study what the church has proposed about issues over the centuries.  

“It’s a program of looking at human issues and I do this every day,” says Giancola, who has worked for Ontario’s Office of the Children’s Lawyer as well as the Office of the Public Guardian and Trustee, offices designed to protect the legal, personal, and financial interests of people who face potential vulnerabilities at the hands of others. 

Today, Giancola works in private practice but often engages on matters involving children and other vulnerable clients.  

Thanks in part to his Christianity & Culture studies, he says he has learned to “look at people with charity and mercy. I exercise prudence and judgment. Christianity & Culture prepared me for life.”  

(Above photo L-R: St. Mike’s alumni: Andrea Carandang, Patrick Nolan, Adam Giancola, Therese Hassan and RSM Theology Recruitment and Enrolment Officer Erica Figueiredo.)

For more information about St. Mike’s Christianity & Culture program, including queries about enrollment and completion, contact smc.programs@utoronto.ca.

For information about Regis St. Michael’s Faculty of Theology programs, email inquiry.usmctheology@utoronto.ca.

Susan Murray graduated from St. Michael’s College in 1972, majoring in History. She received a Master of Library Science in 1976 and a Master of Arts in 1982. She was Director of the Film Archives Library in Ottawa, worked at the medical and dental libraries at the University of Toronto, was Director of the Film Reference Library for TIFF, was Head of the Consumer Health Information Service based at the Toronto Reference Library, and the Manager of the Life Sciences Library at McGill University in Montreal. She reviews books for Publisher’s Weekly, sings in the Echo choir and volunteers at Bridgepoint.

I was a student at St. Mike’s from 1968 to 1972. To say that this was a significant time in my life is an understatement. Many of the friends that I made during this period I still see, and was encouraged by Mrs. McGrath, the reference librarian at Kelly Library, to pursue a career in librarianship.

So many good memories…running across Queen’s Park to take my Russian History and Literature classes, though I also took Philosophy and Shakespeare classes at St. Mike’s. Dealing with colourful characters while working part-time at the library. For a break between studying and writing term papers, going to the Coop for a honeybun. Assisting and later co-running the St. Michael’s College Film Club before the age of VCRs, DVDs and then film streaming.

Reunions are important: I regularly attend and have seen old friends from far away who have come back to connect at St. Mike’s. For a number of years, I have written a welcome letter to the class of ’72 with the addition of a pertinent song line, such as from Simon and Garfunkel’s “Old Friends’ and this year’s “It doesn’t matter what you wear just as long as you are there.”

Hope to see you at this year’s reunion!

St. Mike’s annual alumni reunion is taking place both online and in person this year from Thursday, May 26 to Sunday, May 29. Special events are planned for honoured years ending in 2 and 7. For more information, please contact Brittany.davila@utoronto.ca.

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Dr. Christopher De Bono is Executive Director of Mission, Values and Spiritual Care for Unity Health Toronto. A practical theologian, a clinical and organizational ethicist, and a certified Spiritual Care chaplain, Christopher earned his BA and PhD at St. Michael’s and his MDiv at Regis. 

No Shame in Testing Positive for Covid

“No one wakes up dreaming of working through a pandemic!” a good friend once told me, but this latest Omicron wave, with its significant transmissibility and ubiquitous presence, has become a challenge for so many of us health care workers.

Health care workers have the “real world” experience of caring for patients who have tested positive for Covid, while following each and every precaution, including getting vaccinated against COVID-19—the most important action we can take to protect each other and prevent severe disease. We have also been among those testing positive or have been among those exposed through the community.

Hospitals have strong supports in place for staff members who are exposed or who are experiencing symptoms so that they can get tested quickly and stay home in order to keep themselves and our patients safe.

As a senior executive in health care, I know this pandemic is having a toll on our staff, physicians, learners, and volunteers. Health care workers across the province are feeling burnt out, and while we are working to increase mental health supports, I’ve also noticed some people feeling shame in getting Covid even though they’ve followed precautions and are vaccinated. Why?

Almost all of us health care workers do what we do because we care. Wanting to serve and help is in our DNA, part of the age-old culture of being a healer. That is why we might think getting Covid as health care staff means we are letting people down—our teams, our patients. 

I admit that when I am waiting for a test result, I sometimes have a fear of “what if”? And if I am honest, somewhere in my head is not only a worry of how badly I’ll get it, how I might not be able to actively work, but a little voice saying “What will people say?” as I believe I have been so careful.

As we all know, voices like that are flags for negative thinking—and not only should we spot negative thinking, we should stop negative thinking—and then think and act differently. At times like this I have had to say to myself, “Christopher, there would be no shame in getting Covid if the test comes back positive.”

There’s another reason not to succumb to shame in getting Covid when you do everything in your power to protect yourself and others. There is no shame in getting Covid because there ought not to be a stigma attached to a virus or an illness. Our history teaches us the harm that stigmatization of any illness can do. Think for example about stigma in HIV/AIDS or in mental health. Shame about getting Covid is an awful burden for healing professionals to have to carry themselves. And so, let me say again: “There is no shame in getting Covid.”

Looking forward, I sincerely hope that today’s modelling and data prove to be true. Trending suggests that this wave has mostly plateaued locally, and we hope that new infections fall as quickly as they spiked.

If you know a health care worker, especially one who has tested positive in spite of every precaution, please thank them for their ongoing service.

We’re all dreaming of waking up to work in a post-pandemic world.

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Maria Gallo (SMC 9T8) is Interim Chair of the USMC Alumni Association Board. She is an alumni strategist, scholar, entrepreneur, and author of The Alumni Way: Building Lifelong Value from Your University Investment (Policy Press, 2021). She is the founder of the research consultancy KITE — Keep in Touch Education and The Alumni Way Academy, promoting alumni potential. Alongside her social enterprise work, Maria is a Visiting Research Fellow at the Trinity Business School, Trinity College Dublin, and the expert alumni advisor for CERN in Switzerland. Maria lives in Donegal, Ireland with her husband Morgan and two children, Luca and Tara.

Lifelong Alumni Connection—Even From a Distance

We have experienced a connection disruption. I’ve spent the better part of the last 20 years living in the west of Ireland, soaking up the sea and scenery. My trips to Canada were very frequent, and meeting fellow St Mike’s alumni always factored into my plans. When I attended my 20th reunion, I gathered with the lifelong friends I met at Loretto College. In fact, I stayed at Loretto—what a treat! Things change, things stay the same.

In March 2020, my husband Morgan and I made a spur-of-the-moment decision to fly to Canada on the cusp of lockdown. We packed up our two young kids for a travel adventure. We thought it might last a few weeks. We stayed for four months. Connection took on a different meaning during this time. I connected. I reconnected. I re-evaluated the meaning of connection. Our windows looked out to the snow of winter, and, eventually, the scorching hot summer. Our screens offered us another window onto the world.

Once we settled back at home in the summer of 2020, I knew my experience of connection was in transition. I knew my finished manuscript needed a serious rewrite. I conducted more Zoom interviews and research. The series of lockdowns in Ireland—which included a limit of travel to a five-kilometer radius from home—meant my ability to study alumni connection was entirely virtual. 

What I witnessed and participated in was the ability to connect from anywhere and any time. I had the pleasure of meeting U of T students and St. Mike’s recent grads during this time. Time zones apart, this informal mentorship was as beneficial to me as to them as they navigate their future careers. The best part was that, this time, from my rural home on County Donegal, I wasn’t the only one relying on screens. The world’s window for connection was online.

In the opening of my book, The Alumni Way: Building Lifelong Value from Your University Investment I present this premise: we are all connected. It’s the word alumni that connects us. There is a democratization of alumni connection that has happened over the past two years. We can connect because of a shared place. We are all members of the St. Mike’s community, for instance. What’s powerful is this virtual connection despite our distance, our caring responsibilities, our backgrounds, our circumstances. 

I spent months pouring over alumni connection to complete my final manuscript of The Alumni Way.  During this process, I realized that I could link back to St. Mike’s in a way I never thought possible before. Like the serendipitous moments I note in my book, there was a call for new board members for the Alumni Association. Up until now, distance was always the barrier. Now, I knew the lockdown that was keeping us apart was also bringing us together. I took the leap.

Fast forward, and I am delighted and honoured to take on the role as Interim Chair of the Alumni Association Board. For many years, I read my St. Michael’s alumni magazine in front of a roaring turf fire thousands of miles away. I admired the energy Andy Lubinsky 7T9 brought to his leadership of the Alumni Association Board.

Now, I am excited that I can participate and connect on a level playing field. During our meetings, we are all squares on the Zoom screen. This is not to discount the importance of place. We all can appreciate sights and sounds of being on the St. Mike’s campus, especially with trees ablaze with colour and the new students ablaze with a hopeful future. I can’t wait for my next visit.

The future of alumni connection is one where each one of us in the St. Mike’s community feels, despite our busy lives, our commitments, our day to day, that we can reconnect to place and peopIe. Alumni—graduates, former students, former and current staff and faculty, religious communities— can diffuse their life experience to every corner of the College. We can derive benefit too; we can reconnect to old friends and create new ones. We can enrich our lives with learning and insight the College offers through its teaching, research, service to community, and alumni accomplishments.

Following the St. Mike’s Alumni Reunion event in May 2021, my kids are devouring the Neil Flambe Capers series of books by Kevin Sylvester (SMC 8T9). My dad Victor (SMC 6T6) is regularly attending St. Mike’s events online. I connect almost daily with my Loretto 9T8 friends. Aren Mnatzakanian (SMC 1T9) and I organized virtual U of T in Ireland alumni events. Sara Franca (SMC 0T1) recently introduced me to new contacts valuable to my Irish network. I worked with Diana Paolone (SMC 1T7), who shares my time zone and passion for alumni networks. These lifelong connections do not leave us if we are open to their potential.

I appeal to current St. Mike’s students: Don’t discount the power of your alumni connection. Don’t grab your degree and go. Immerse yourself in the experience. Make a point to build your network starting with classmates, fellow commuters, roommates, professors, staff members. Expand your outreach to the alumni community too. We are a friendly bunch. You are—and will be—connected for St. Mike’s for life. 

To everyone: I hope you emerge from this pandemic better connected and yearning better connection. Consider St. Mike’s as a place you can begin your reconnection. I look forward to meeting you at the next alumni event, strolling by Brennan Hall or Kelly Library and online!

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Ann Keating has had a varied career as a lawyer, as Director of Community Ministry for the Anglican Diocese of Toronto, and as Pastoral Consultant for the Catholic Children’s Aid Society of Toronto, from which she retired in 2017. A lifelong learner, Ann also studied theology and psychotherapy.

A Very Special Hoikety Choik

Dear Students of the University of St. Michael’s College,

Of all the things you value from your time at St. Mike’s, you might never expect that 72 years after you graduate, one of the things you will be grateful for, as I am, is that you learned the St. Mike’s cheer, Hoikety Choik. Let me explain…

My 93-year-old mom, Mary Jean O’Shaughnessy Keating, is a 1949 graduate of St. Michael’s College. She was diagnosed with dementia and now lives in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, lovingly cared for by her carers. She can’t remember my name. I, her daughter, am a 1976 grad of St. Mike’s and I live in southern Ontario. Over the past few years, as my mother’s dementia deepened, I began to sing with her on our regular Skype calls. I wondered whether she might remember Hoikety Choik and I decided to try it.  To my astonishment, as I began the chant in one of our calls, she joined right in.     

To my utter delight, unconscious of the loss of her memory, mom sang along with her own version of the cheer: “Ripperty rapperty ripperty rapperty, hee-hee-hee!”  When we speak by Skype we often end with a rousing—and usually new—version of Hoikety Choik. I had no idea that dementia would have me falling on the floor with laughter at my mom.

Mom loved St. Michael’s. Her older sisters, Millwood O’Shaughnessy Birch and Ruth O’Shaughnessy Moleski, preceded her. Mom was born in Cobalt, Ontario in 1928 and her dad worked at the O’Brien mine mill. As an adolescent he had moved from the Maritimes with his father to find work in the silver mines in Cobalt, forfeiting the education he hoped for to help finance their large family back in the East. All his siblings went to university except him.  Amazingly, in the 1940s he insisted that his daughters as well as his sons get the opportunity he missed.

When I went to see mom one weekend I wanted to make the most of our time together, as I didn’t know when I might see her again or how her memory might deteriorate. I cuddled up with her, arm in arm on the sofa, and she reminisced about her days at St Mike’s. As we talked, I was soon with the young 20-year-old student again. She told of life at Loretto College, of dances, travelling with the debating team, studying for and writing exams, and going to Mass.  She told me her mom and dad travelled by train from Cobalt when her dad was on business and they took the O’Shaughnessy girls out to dinner. They were thrilled to get dressed to the nines for a fine dinner at the Royal York Hotel.

But mom’s years at St. Mike’s also included catastrophic loss. Mom was very close to her younger brother, John O’Shaughnessy. He entered his first year at St. Mike’s in September 1948. Unfortunately, John contracted spinal meningitis that fall. He was taken to St. Joseph’s Hospital. Mom took the streetcar after classes as often as she could to see him. John was flown home to Cobalt at Christmas. Mom never saw him alive again. He died in April and was buried on April 6, her 21^st birthday, the year she graduated.

One man at St. Mike’s who loved to dance asked my mother out and captured her heart:  Raymond Francis Keating. My dad grew up in Weston, Ontario. His mother died in childbirth when he was six years old. He quit school in Grade Nine to go to work as a delivery boy at the A&P food store because he couldn’t afford clothes to go to school. Dad always wanted an education and he told me he prayed to the Blessed Virgin Mary regularly that he would have that opportunity. His prayers were answered when, as an RCAF war vet, he was given money for his education. He went off to St. Michael’s College, where he met mom and graduated in 1950. Mom and dad were married at St. Basil’s in 1951.

I have an alumni card at the Kelly library and whenever I was there I used to drop by the 2^nd floor just to look at the picture of him with his graduating class. I grew up listening to my dad reminisce with awe about his philosophy classes at St. Mike’s, especially the one on Thomas Aquinas where he learned about the “five proofs for the existence of God.” I knew I would go to St. Mike’s, and I did, having the pleasure of being introduced to philosophy by Father Edward Synan and studying Aquinas myself.

My parents became teachers and eventually my dad became a high school principal.  They were both gifted educators, teaching in Oshawa, Iroquois Falls, Cobalt and Sault Ste. Marie. Dad died in 2007.

In the 1970’s, while dad was a principal in the Sault, a young woman came into his office asking to finish her high school diploma. Because she was a year older than most high schoolers, another principal in the city had refused to allow her to enroll. Dad said, “Come on in.  We can fix you up.” Fast forward 20 years to when my dad was in intensive care in Sault Ste. Marie. In walked a woman who said, “Hello Mr. Keating!” Dad asked, “Do I know you?” She said, “I was the student you helped to finish her high school diploma so that she could be a nurse—your nurse, today.” Imagine that…

I was able to visit my mom this week after two years of Covid kept me from travelling to see her. While the bubbly Mary Jean O’Shaughnessy Keating has become a frail, 93-year-old young lady whose words are now often nonsensical, I took one look into her face to see a sparkle in her eyes and a brilliant smile that told me her spirit is very much alive. I asked Mom if she would like to sing with me for all the students at St. Michael’s—especially those of you starting off, or struggling, or missing home, or finding 2021 a tough beginning. She said, “Yes!”

On this page you will find the recording we made on my iPhone. Listen to me and my beautiful mom chanting out “Hoikety Choik!” together and to my mother’s final words: “We won. We won!”   

We cheer you on.

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Douglas Moggach studied political science and economics at University of Toronto, and was active in political and social affairs at St. Mike’s. He obtained his PhD from Princeton, and has taught at University of Ottawa since 1976. He has held visiting appointments in Australia, China, Germany, Italy, and the UK, and has published widely in German philosophy. He is a class representative for the St. Michael’s Class of 1970, and will be sharing a St. Mike’s memory at this year’s Honoured Years Cocktail Hour during Alumni Reunion.

Coping and Partly Coping: Living with the Pandemic

The academic year 2020–21 had been shaping up to be an exceptionally good one. I retired from teaching a few years ago, but have remained active in research. So I had been invited to spend the month of October 2020 at the University of Salamanca, and had also been awarded visiting fellowships in the UK from January to May 2021. The intent was to discuss my latest book, which came out in Germany just before the pandemic, and to get feedback on my current projects, and of course to see my friends and favourite places.

Alas! All these and other plans had to be postponed indefinitely. Only now, 14 months later, is it even possible to think about rescheduling these activities; but even so, everything remains tentative. My family and I have been fortunate in that we’ve been spared physical illness, and there is much to be grateful for, as we must constantly remind ourselves. Still, the frustrations and delays were often hard to deal with, as I know we can all say.

So how to cope? Why not reactivate some dormant projects, or make progress in other endeavours that I had belatedly begun? Besides being vaccinated, I have administered other pandemic antidotes to myself. Ever since I was a boy, I had wanted to learn Ancient Greek. It wasn’t offered in my high school, but I had studied it on my own, on and off over the years. The language is elusive and astonishingly complex, the hardest I have ever attempted, and as an autodidact I had never been able to advance beyond intermediate level. A good friend who is a retired Classics professor kindly offered to guide me through Plato’s Apology in the original, and with another friend we arranged weekly meetings on Zoom, reading the Greek, struggling to translate it, and having the impenetrable points of syntax and vocabulary explained to us. It was highly rewarding, not only because I now feel able to tackle other Greek texts with some confidence, but also because of the camaraderie that we felt and could look forward to experiencing every week: virtual, indeed, but genuine.

Another antidote was bagpipes. I began learning a few years ago, again fulfilling a childhood dream, and I think it’s even a harder exercise than Plato’s Greek! It takes manual dexterity and an ample lung capacity, and presents significant challenges for late beginners like me. I have an outstanding teacher, patient and encouraging, so that my weekly lessons, remote, of course, are always enjoyable, even when my renditions are less than stellar. Before the lockdowns I had accompanied the band that my teacher directs on one of their tours of Scotland, in the course of which I was able to play along (only drones, no melody, wisely), in Skye, and to meet the Queen when the band performed at Balmoral. My services were not required for that particular performance, but I was designated to present Her Majesty with a gift. On being introduced to her as my teacher’s newest student, Queen Elizabeth looked at me with some surprise, and asked, “Really? Just now?” An apt comment, but I persist, even now. I hope to be good enough to play “Scots wha’ hae” with the band on the next visit to the Wallace Monument in Stirling. Regardless, the lessons are another high point during weeks and months of confinement.

eMaybe the most important thing is to keep working and keep focus. Though the content is often good, Zoom conferences lack the immediacy and ease of interaction that you get in personal meetings, and deprived of my usual networks and sources of inspiration, I found myself floundering and unproductive for too long during the lockdowns. That had to change, and I recently roused myself to submit a new book proposal to a university press. I await the assessment, but in any case I intend to complete this manuscript in the next twelve months. As a colleague once bluntly advised me when I complained about the difficulties I was having in revising an article, “Work harder!” He was right. That was the answer back then, and perhaps it is the best pandemic antidote right now, too. It’s not the same, and it’s not as good as it might have been had so much time not been irretrievably lost. I’m only partly coping, if I’m honest with myself, but as Aristotle instructs us, the good for us human beings is always the best attainable good, even if it’s not the absolute best. So with that, with labour and Aristotelian prudence, we cope as best we can.

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Part of the communications team, Catherine Mulroney studied English and Medieval Studies at St. Mike’s and returned recently to complete an M Div at the Faculty of Theology.

A Shot in the Arm

“Love hurts,” the old song says. But a little short-term pain for long-term gain is always worth it—and especially in these unusual times.

A few days ago, I joined the millions of Canadians now vaccinated. I got a shot of Pfizer and, in the spirit of full disclosure, it didn’t really hurt at all, but for a little site tenderness that lasted all of 18 hours.

My injection moment made me want to recreate Rocky’s famous run up the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, or Braveheart’s freedom speech, or Gene’s Kelly’s iconic “Singin’ in the Rain” dance because had been so long in coming and meant so much.

In truth, though, the only thing I did do was get a little teary-eyed because taking 20 minutes out of my day meant I was now one step closer to seeing my children again, a little bit closer to getting back to my real office, and I could now say I was helping in my own small way to end the nightmare we’ve all been living for more than a year. I think I’d forgotten what a pleasant sensation relief can be.

I’m happy to say that my employer, the University of St. Michael’s College, has been supportive as vaccinations have been rolled out, encouraging staff and faculty to get a shot, and offering time off to attend vaccine clinic appointments. It’s a mindset that brings our 180 strategic plan alive for me. 

In these days of the coronavirus, I am reminded that the 180 is not just a statement to hang on the wall but a reflection of a lived attitude. The references to such things as concern for the common good, the need to recognize the dignity of all, and our need to care for all creation actually mean something to all of us. Challenging times are bringing that to light. I see this in the professors’ concern for students’ wellbeing, and their understanding that, these days, support and encouragement trumps deadlines. I see it in the student life staff and volunteers’ outreach to students, ensuring they know about extra funding available during COVID or offering reminders to take a break and engage in self-care, informing students of how they can get extra emotional support if needed. And I see it in email traffic and Zoom calls where we are all beginning to realize, via expressions of longing to be together again, that we might all be a little closer than just colleagues.

Daily, I watch the very lessons lived out on campus that I learned in ethics classes while studying theology at St. Mike’s, or while reading the classics here as an undergrad. Life is beautiful and precious and we are called to do our best not only to respect and protect it, but to celebrate it, too. To me, that lesson includes getting a shot—for myself and for my neighbours. We are to live out the now oft-used phrase that we are all in this together. I’m proud to be an alumna—and an employee—of a workplace that practises what it preaches.

As strong as all these motivations are, though, my primary impetus for getting a shot was to ease my kids’ worries. Their dad died a week before the pandemic lockdown began, and the early warnings about the severity of COVID had them stressed about their mother’s health.

“We’ve just had one parent die. We don’t want to lose the other,” said the oldest, soon after the pandemic began, speaking as the now-elder statesman in his usual blunt fashion.

For the following six weeks, I only went as far as our garden, guiltily answering the door on occasions, but mostly watching the world pass by from our front window.

But then, early May dawned, and with it, my first solitary wedding anniversary. I felt an overwhelming desire to visit the garden centre and buy some plants, something that Mike and I had done in May for as long in as we’d been homeowners.

I can’t say it was a fun trip, as it was laden with guilt: guilt for co-opting my youngest into accompanying me on my covert operation, and guilt that I was contravening a heartfelt request from my children. On an up note, though, I felt 17 again, because it reminded me of being in high school and bending a few of my parents’ rules—just slightly, of course.

I monitored dropping age limits and expanding availability and leapt when my chance came. It took close to an hour on hold with the Ministry of Health to book an appointment, and the poor woman who answered my call had a wailing child in the background, but it was all worth it.

My kids put on a brave face at all times for their mother but I know they were relieved. I was just happy I could do something that would ease some of the pile of worries each of them has these days. Then attention shifted to when they could be vaccinated, too, jealous that Molly, the child living in Florida for the year, has already had both doses of Moderna.

This has been an extended period of loss for all of us. Some of the those losses, of course, are trivial—the inability to hit the links, or the discovery that not being able to go to the hairdresser’s means saying goodbye to a preferred hair colour.

And some, of course, are profound. I don’t know anyone who hasn’t lost a friend or relative in the past year, including some to COVID, with their grief compounded by the inability to say a proper goodbye.

That’s why the vaccine, along with continuing measures such as masking and social distancing, remain so important. A shot in your arm is a shot in the arm for all of us. Take one for the team.

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In spite of having lived in the Greater Toronto Area her entire life, St. Mike’s alumna Fiona Li told a panel audience Monday afternoon that anti-Asian sentiments sometimes makes her feel “like I don’t belong here.”

Li joined St. Mike’s undergrads Maya Martin-Spisak and Warren Liu for an online discussion on anti-Asian racism, moderated by student union president Cianna Choo.

“There’s a notion that we are perpetually a foreigner,” says Li, who is a graduate of St. Michael’s Christianity and Culture program, as well as holding two degrees from the Faculty of Theology. “No matter how Canadian I am, I am seen as a foreigner. It feels like I don’t belong here.”

She cited preconceptions on everything from what Asian students study through to stereotypes of Asian women as ultimately harmful to mental health.

“You doubt yourself. You ask yourself ‘Am I worthy?’” she said.

Liu noted that, while he lived in China for 10 years, he was born in Canada and has spent much of his life here, but sometimes people’s approach to him makes him think of “imposter syndrome. You feel like you’re not really Canadian.”

Martin-Spisak added that, over time, she was learned to push back at common micro-aggressions.

Born in China and adopted by a family in California, she lived in a community where she was the only Asian person in the neighbourhood.

“I didn’t see people like me. I ate the same peanut butter and jelly sandwiches as everyone else but when I would say I was American people would say, ‘But where are you really from?’”

She continued by saying she felt guilt because of choosing humanities over STEM courses, worried how people would respond. She then stressed there are dangers in society creating what she called “monolithic assumptions about Asians,” a reality that Li also addressed.

“It’s not helpful, because there are so many different ways of being Asian—or Canadian,” Li said. “To generalize is to do people an injustice because our experiences are particular. I speak Cantonese. I don’t speak Mandarin. To ignore details like that is to disregard people.”

Liu agreed, noting that sometimes people simply do not recognize the impact a casual comment can have.

“When people say, ‘You’re good at (a subject) because you’re Asian!’ you have a weird feeling of having your hard work boiled down to a stereotype,” he said.

Martin-Spisak agreed, noting, for example, that when people talk in stereotypes about wealth, it negates the experience of Asian people living in countries where opportunities are limited.

“It erases that difference and that struggle,” she said.

Any kind of assumption is dangerous, she added.

“People have notions of Asian women as quiet and submissive; I’m not!” she said. “To think of Asian women as submissive of ‘exotic’ creates a toxic train of thought.”

Liu mentioned the impact the pandemic has had on how Asian people are treated.

“The coronavirus was discovered in Wuhan and that had a negative effect on Asian people,” he said, noting that while what he labelled “soft racism” has long existed, “this has exposed a propensity to commit violence. We are seeing a more raw form of racism.”

Martin-Spisak told the panel that when COVID-19 first took hold, she would notice people move away from her in stores, a reaction Choo said she had also experienced.

While acknowledging the struggles and the challenges, panelist also offered ideas on how the broader community can help.

“The soul of Canada is a place where people of all races can come together and make miracles happen,” Liu said optimistically, suggesting kindly that people begin by exposing themselves to news things, including food.

“How can you hate someone when you try their food and find it delicious? Have an openness,” he said.

All panelists agreed that broadening exposure is key, that Asian people are more than kung fu, K-pop and anime.

The classroom is a key space in acknowledging and addressing racism, Martin-Spisak said, noting her appreciation for professors who acknowledge the trauma world events can cause and encourage students to care for their mental health.

As a Chinese woman studying theology, Li said her classes often feature the works of white men.

“How about trying an Asian scholar?” she said.

She also encouraged students to call out racism when they hear it.

“It helps to recognize that someone is on our side.”

Choo, as moderator, agreed on both points, saying that seeing Asian role models encourages students to see themselves in new ways, and that the support of friends and classmates sends a message of care. She also emphasized how important it is to provide opportunities for students to learn about each other’s cultures.

There are ongoing challenges to be faced, Liu stressed.

“Are the jokes okay? Are they productive?”  

Dean of Students Duane Rendle closed the event by noting that anti-Asian violence is an issue that has been “below the radar” and he thanked students for their participation.

“We want to ensure that all students—including our international students—are welcome.”

Renata Brum is a Regulated Canadian Immigration Consultant (RCIC). Prior to founding Brum Immigration in 2018, she was the Senior Citizenship Judge of Canada, with Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada for 5 years, responsible for supervising and training 36 citizenship judges. Reporting directly to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration Canada, she was a citizenship judge for 6 years prior to her appointment as Senior Judge. Renata is an alumna of St. Michael’s and a former Vice Chair of the Collegium.

Helping International Students Navigate Canada’s Immigration System During the COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has been an unprecedented and disruptive force in all our lives. Our daily routines have undergone significant upheaval and our social interactions have become largely virtual—a practice that disrupts our intuitive inclination to connect through personal presence and physical touch. 

Staying physically apart has had a significant impact on all students in Canada who have had to muster up new levels of resilience and creativity as they adapt to online learning and to prolonged isolation from their friends and classmates with whom they normally interacted with over the course of their studies. 

Perhaps one of the harder hit groups has been international students, who are often in Canada with limited support, without their family members, and who have now been separated from their friends and communities for almost a year as provincial and federal lockdowns and restrictions have strictly curtailed social gatherings.

Additionally, the sharp decrease—or in many cases, total suspension—of in-person learning, looming immigration status expiry dates, and an unclear future with regard to job opportunities, have left international students with justified anxieties about what comes next. 

Over the course of the past year, I have had the opportunity to help international students navigate the murky, and often overwhelming, information provided to them by Canadian immigration officials. These clients in particular touch a nerve, elicit a deep, intuitive and reflexive compassion, since they are the age of all of my five children—18–24—who are themselves reaching beyond their grasp toward the future they are dreaming for themselves.

During these unusual times, I have assisted international students with applications for initial study permits, extensions of their status in Canada, applying for Post Graduate Work Permits, and have assisted financially precarious students obtain emergency work permits—notwithstanding their student status—so they could work full-time and support themselves in Canada.

My clients’ stories and struggles as they navigate how to continue their dreams of making a better life for themselves in Canada continue to inspire me. I recently worked with a young student, a brilliant aerospace engineer who, having been disowned by his family, was alone in Canada without any support. He found himself on the brink of poverty, utterly destitute, and with no way to pay his tuition unless he was able to work full-time. Bound to part-time work by the conditions imposed on him as an international student, he did not know what to do. When we connected, I was moved. My maternal instincts kicked in. I offered him a room in our home and then set to work on his immigration status. I knew he was an ideal candidate for an emergency “destitute” student work permit. I took on his case pro bono and successfully obtained his work permit authorization—in 3 months—giving him the ability to adequately support himself in Canada.

Fortunately, in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (“IRCC”) has introduced a variety of policies aimed at assisting international students begin and continue their studies and at obtaining the proper authorization to work after they have completed their program.

Applying for a Study Permit

Before travelling to Canada, the vast majority of international students must apply for a study permit. Only citizens and permanent residents of the United States of America, and limited others may apply for a study permit at a port of entry at this time. Unsurprisingly, study permits issued to students online and before travelling to Canada are delayed—so be prepared for a wait.

Entering Canada

International students who have a valid study permit or letter of introduction confirming that their application for a study permit has been approved and that they have been accepted to a designated Canadian school that has an approved COVID-19 readiness plan are exempt from the travel restrictions currently in place. This exemption also applies to accompanying family members of workers or students who wish to study in Canada.

Technical Bits — Extending Your Studies & Restoring your Status

What if your study permit has expired and you need more time to complete your studies or you wish to pursue additional studies in Canada?  You may apply to extend your study permit online.

If your study permit has already expired, you may be eligible to restore your status. If it has been less than 90 days since your study permit expired, you can restore your status as a student by applying online. In addition to these provisions, there are special measures for students whose status has expired beyond 90 days—an unusually compassionate step for those who were particularly hard hit by COVID-19 uncertainties.

Working in Canada After You Complete Your Program: Changes to the Post-Graduate Work Permit Program

Eligibility for a Post-Graduate Work Permit (PGWP) now varies greatly depending on whether you are inside or outside of Canada. These requirements are technical, and it’s best to call us for advice before applying.

Mandatory Quarantine

Although international students are exempt from the travel restrictions, they are not exempt from the mandatory 14-day quarantine requirement. On February 21, 2021, all international travellers (except for a few limited exemptions) are required to enter a government-approved quarantine facility for a period of 3 days as they await the results of the COVID-19 test they underwent upon arriving in Canada.

We continue to assist international students at all stages of their studies in Canada in navigating Canada’s immigration system.

In 2020, Sister Penny McDonald celebrated her diamond anniversary of her entrance into the Congregation of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Toronto. After obtaining a BA at St. Michael’s, her main ministry until 1995 was in education, as a secondary school teacher and administrator. Sister Penny realized her need to deepen her theological understanding for her work with students and in the field of vocational discernment, and was awarded a Master of Divinity degree at St. Michael’s Faculty of Theology. In 1995, Sister Penny moved from teaching to volunteering at St. Michael’s Hospital in the HIV clinic. Later, she directed the Drop-In, a place for women who were homeless or under-housed. For the past 14 years, Sister Penny has worked at Providence Healthcare as a volunteer in the Adult Day Program. The joy and satisfaction of serving in one of the original ministries of the Sisters of St. Joseph in Toronto, and of being part of a welcoming community of compassion, hope, and healing, has been source of joy. 

“Listen to what life is asking you”

On Thursday March 13, 2020, I returned home from Providence Healthcare, where I have volunteered for 12 years in the Adult Day Programme (ADP), a programme for people who have dementia and are living at home. The following day I received an e-mail informing me that all volunteers were suspended until further notice. When I left Providence Thursday I had no idea that I would not be returning on Tuesday to be with the club members and staff.

I am a Sister of St. Joseph of Toronto, and the Charism of our Community is reconciliation and service of the dear neighbour. It is a challenge for me to accept that loving my neighbour is to stay home, to wash my hands, to wear a mask. In contrast, Our Foundress, Sister Delphine Fontbonne, arrived in Toronto in 1851 with three other Sisters in the midst of the Typhus epidemic and took on the management of an orphanage on Jarvis Street. For these Sisters, loving the dear neighbour meant living with the orphans, establishing schools, planning the House of Providence, which would accommodate hundreds of poor seniors, the sick, and immigrants. Sister Delphine died on February 7, 1856. She had stayed with a woman who was alone and distraught, and she had tended to the sick Sisters in her Community.

Today, of course, I want to be with the club members and staff of the ADP, and I await the day when the COVID-19 pandemic will end. Until such time, in the words of Dr. Ted Dunn, as expressed in his book The Role of Meaning-Making in Transitional Times, I “listen to what life is asking me.” I find purpose and meaning in being aware of the suffering in our world, following the news and world events, entering into committee work carried on with Zoom, sorting and organizing and packing, exercising, praying, gardening, reading, listening to music, crosswording. For this moment in time my life is changed. I believe the change is not forever!            

This year our Congregation is celebrating God’s goodness to us for 170 years. It is our prayer that we be healers and show the compassionate face of God to our dear neighbour. March 8 is International Women’s Day and I thank God that I belong to a Community of women—a Community that dates from 1648 in France. I live in the Grace of all the women who spent their lives in service of the dear neighbour without distinction and in fidelity to our call to continue the mission of Jesus “that all may be one”.

Source: Ted Dunn, PhD The Role of Meaning-Making in Transitional Times

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Nick Pantaleo, FCPA, FCA, SMC8T0 B. Comm, is a retired executive of Rogers Communications Inc. and a former partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers. He is a Senior Fellow at the C.D. Howe Institute. Recently, he took time to meet virtually with students as part of St. Mike’s Alumni Mentorship Program.

Change is Constant

Where has the time gone?

I blinked and suddenly I found myself in a virtual meeting with future St. Mike’s grads almost 41 years after my own graduation! 41 years!

That’s right. I am a St. Mike’s alum, having graduated with a Bachelor of Commerce degree in 1980. I then embarked on a 33-year career—22 as partner—at PricewaterhouseCoopers, specializing in taxation, before “retiring” to take a senior vice president position at Rogers Communications. In 2019, I retired from Rogers. The timing was planned but it turned out to be fortuitous because I was able to devote more time to my aging parents as they battled health issues and moved into a retirement home.

I usually make the point that I “retired from Rogers” as I did from PwC, as opposed to saying I am “retired.” After all, I plan to—and have remained—busy since leaving Rogers. I play more golf in the summer, and I spent more time at our place in Florida in the winter months BC—“Before COVID.” I have also written some papers and remain engaged in tax and other policy discussions at the C.D. Howe Institute, where I am a Senior Fellow. I also have more time to focus on my charitable and board responsibilities —until recently I was on the Board of Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Toronto and am currently on the Board of Catholic Cemeteries and Funeral Services.

While my graduation was over a generation ago, I have never been far away from university life. My oldest daughter is a SMC1T3 Commerce graduate and my youngest daughter graduated from Guelph University with a business degree in 2017. For many years after my own graduation, I was very involved in recruiting university students. I also taught tax to university students throughout most of my career, and I continue to do guest lectures at the University of Waterloo, where I was an Executive in Residence shortly after leaving Rogers.

Teaching was my primary source of personal development throughout my career. After graduation and later after another year of study to get my professional accounting designation, I guess I found it hard to discipline myself to be a student again. I found teaching a great way to stay current. Plus, teaching was very rewarding. I always found my interactions with students to be refreshing and a welcome diversion from the intensity of my professional career. Sure, student interactions could be intense at times—like around exam and mark time!—but it was not the same as dealing with client matters. I find students’ enthusiasm to be infectious. Their curiosity and questions about what to expect “in the real world” challenge me and are an opportunity for personal reflection.

So it was a no-brainer to accept the invitation to participate in a virtual meeting with future grads last month as part of St. Mike’s Alumni Mentorship Program.

Graduates of my generation faced challenges and uncertainty. Does anyone ever know what the future holds for them? Students graduating this year and possibly even the next, do so in circumstances they could not have imagined when they started their university journey. Who would have thought that this decade would begin with the world struggling through a pandemic the likes of which have not been experienced in more than 100 years?

How do students graduating from St. Mike’s meet the challenges brought on by the pandemic and quell their anxiety about the future?

Based on my experience, two things come to mind immediately.

First, as with all challenges we face, start by trusting yourself. Trust your abilities. Yes, you will be a work in process when you graduate. But take comfort from the fact that you will graduate from a preeminent college in a world-renowned university under extraordinarily difficult circumstances. Arguably, no group has faced a greater challenge during the pandemic than students—of all ages. They have had to basically re-learn how to learn while being largely isolated from their peer group and unable to participate in extracurricular activities that are equally important to one’s development. How will you have met this challenge? One. Day. At. A. Time. That is how you will meet the challenge(s) “in the real world” brought on by the pandemic. And for those times when you do doubt your ability, continue to ensure your support system is in place—parents, spouse, partner, children, coach, friends, colleagues. At some point, they will need you as well.

Second, remember that change is constant. That is a good thing. Change can be the great equalizer if approached with a positive mind frame. Change creates opportunities. The pandemic is forcing all (profit and not for profit) businesses, organizations and institutions to re-invent themselves, to rethink their operating model from top to bottom. Everything from how to service customers to how and where employees will work. Those too hard-wired to the way of doing things BC will struggle. They will have difficulty pivoting. They will need help. Therein lies the opportunities for future graduates. 

I look forward to sharing more of my experiences in future blogs. Reach out to me at npantaleokc@gmail.com with any thoughts or questions.

In the meantime, stay safe!

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St. Michael’s alumna Suzanne Heft spent her childhood living in the United States, the Middle East and England before attending the University of Toronto, graduating with a B.A. in English Literature in 1990. After a brief stint in public relations, she became interested in non-profit fundraising and has been a senior executive on numerous fundraising campaigns over a 20-year Toronto-based career. She met her late husband Harold Heft while working at U of T many years after graduation, and the university holds a special place in her heart as the place where they met. Suzanne’s oldest son Sam is a student at Woodsworth College, and A Perfect Offering, published by Mosaic Press and available from book retailers, is dedicated to him, his younger brother John, and to Harold himself. 

A Perfect Offering

Ring the bells/that still can ring

Forget your perfect offering/There’s a crack

A crack in everything/That’s how the light gets in.

—Leonard Cohen

What would you do if suddenly your world cracked apart?

What if you were a teenager on vacation, sunbathing on a beach and a terrorist bomb blew up just a few metres away from you? Or you were a new mother of a one-year-old baby who inexplicably died in a hospital ICU? What if your beloved parents were both killed by a drunk driver two months before your university graduation? Or what if you collapsed at work, age 49, only to be told you had a brain tumour growing in your head and likely had less than two years to live?

What if. What if.

The last scenario actually happened to me, or rather to my husband, Harold, almost six years ago. A writer by trade, a former English professor and a senior marketing executive, he was rendered unable to read or write by the location of his tumour. A father to two young children, he found himself, suddenly, figuratively, staring down the barrel of a gun. And me alongside him.

Many people reading this are familiar with the “life before” and the “life after.” Traumatic events are the fault lines that separate us from who we were then and who we are now. Understanding and exploring this phenomenon became Harold’s preoccupation in the months after his diagnosis. His past had fallen away like the sheer drop of a cliff below his feet, and the future was now an elusive mirage.

“What do I do now?” he asked me. As he had done all his life, he chose to write. Except this time, I was his scribe. Together, and with help of an editor friend we had both known for years, Harold imagined a book of non-fiction stories, the real, wrenching stories of ordinary people, who, like him, had made passage from “the before” to “the after,” and who had luminous insights and observations to offer. Making this book—a book he himself would have wanted to read—became a true passion project.

Creating a book is a daunting task under any circumstances. Doing so while you’re in the middle of chemotherapy, radiation, and rehabilitation from brain surgery is practically impossible. And yet we worked on it. Tenaciously.

Harold died in 2015, before the completion of a full manuscript of the book he imagined so vividly. At his funeral, there were hundreds of people present while my friend Jim delivered a eulogy where he talked about Harold’s legacy as a storyteller, among other things. Adrift in my own grief, I knew that part of my forced reckoning with death lay in picking up the book project where Harold had left off—and finding a way to complete it.

The submissions we solicited came pouring in. Iranian-Canadian writer Marina Nemat wrote of an encounter with a fellow survivor of the infamous Evin prison in Iran where she had been wrongly jailed as a young woman decades before escaping to Toronto. Rabbi Yael Splansky, mother of three sons, recalled a deeply personal sermon she delivered in front of her entire congregation on the Jewish New Year, having just turned the page on her gruelling treatment for breast cancer. New York Times columnist Jennifer Finney Boylan sent us a story about a near-death moment that changed her life forever, and Canadian photojournalist Paul Watson shared photos and stories of orphans and street children he encountered on location in Kabul and Vietnam, boys and girls with glassy stares and lost childhoods.

All these stories—and many more—polished like gems, made it into the pages of A Perfect Offering: Personal Stories of Trauma and Transformation, which was finally published in December 2020.

I hope that the book is a testament to the power of story. That in our shared vulnerability, we find ways to be less alone with our pain. There is an old adage, “a burden shared is a burden halved.” I’m not sure this is quite true, but I do believe that when other human beings witness our suffering, it calls us to a state of grace that is transformative and compelling.

It is highly serendipitous that this book is published during the middle of a global pandemic, where so many of us are suffering alone, and grieving all manner of losses too numerous to mention. Harold was always skeptical of those folks who said: “everything happens for a reason.” His own story is in the book, but it was half-finished. In the flurry of work on other people’s essays, he neglected his own, until, alas, it was too late. I decided to include it as is, unfinished and real. It is his own imperfect offering.

Indeed, there is perhaps no other kind.

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Mark De Luca (SMC1T5) holds a Bachelor of Arts (Political Science and History) degree from the University of Toronto. After graduating, he pursued a Post-Graduate Certificate in Broadcasting—Radio from Humber College, ultimately moving out West to work as a news reporter/director in rural Manitoba. For the past five years Mark has had the privilege of working in rural and urban centres at a number of radio stations, including 730 CKDM (Dauphin, MB), The Shoreline’s myFM (Kincardine, ON) and 680News in Toronto. Mark now works as a Traffic Reporter with the Canadian Traffic Network (CTN) and can be heard every afternoon on the following stations: Boom 97.3, Flow 93.5, Jazz FM 91, The New Classical FM, 1460 CJOY and Magic 106.1.

InsightOut: The Familiarity of Radio in a Changing World

It’s been roughly one year since Toronto experienced its first full lockdown. I remember it vividly. I was at the local pub having a beer with some buds, chatting about this potential pandemic spreading across the globe. It was being called COVID-19, similar to the SARS outbreak 16 years prior, but we didn’t know much. The World Health Organization was apprehensive about classifying it as a pandemic but was keeping an eye on it. Nearly 365 days later, we find ourselves in the situation we are currently dealing with.

It goes without saying that COVID-19 has completely changed lives for all. From the way we interact with one another to how we conduct our daily lives, this once-in-a-generation virus has been front and centre for one whole year. 

At times it seemed you couldn’t get away from it. Every popular media platform provided wall-to-wall coverage about the pandemic at all hours. Having worked in news radio for close to five years I was used to information overload but COVID-19 presented a whole new meaning when it came to the 24/7 news cycle. Radio—an industry already going through immense change—once again needed to find a way to adapt, learn, and grow.

Rather than disregard the virus entirely, I looked for ways we could evidently beat the illness while living and working amid it. For some, that meant working from home, wearing a mask, social distancing, weekly Zoom video calls, but for me that meant using my platform: radio, and the power it still has over a population.   

Radio has been around for more than 100 years and has changed along with the world around it. Although the medium has taken a new direction in the form of engagement through social media platforms, at its core, the main objective is to communicate important information to a wide audience in real time. As a traffic reporter I quickly realized this when the busy city streets of Toronto and its area highways instantly became bare. What was once gridlock on the 401 now seemed to be open, the hustle and bustle of Yonge & Dundas non-existent, and a backed-up Gardiner Expressway a thing of the past.

I pondered this new world and many times asked myself, “What’s the point of these reports if everyone is at home?” but, in reality, that was not the case. Although the streets were substantially less busy, a new group of people came to light… the Essential Workers. The ones whose jobs did not allow them to stay at home were the people now occupying our roadways. The nurses, frontline health care workers, EMS paramedics, warehouse attendants, truck/ delivery/ bus/ taxi/ UBER drivers, construction workers, plumbers, electricians, mechanics, police officers, and firefighters were now the primary commuters. They were the ones waking up early in the morning, getting in their cars—or jumping on public transit—to provide the necessary services to keep our province safe and economy afloat.

The realization that, for a select few, working from home was not an option quickly resonated with me. For these people, a new level of fear, stress, and anxiety was unexpectedly thrust upon them. For many of these workers, the only break they could potentially have (if they received any at all) was that short timeframe between home and work that they had to themselves.

I reflected on this new reality and how my job could make the lives of these essential workers easier. What could I do to help them? Like many other industries, I was now relegated to a “Home Office” which was anything but—realistically it consisted of a desk, microphone, and a bed sheet over my head. But I was home, and for many this was not an option.

It was at that moment I made the decision to dedicate all my reports to essential workers across the Greater Toronto Area. If I could make someone’s commute easier, I see that as a win. Radio has the unique power to provide much-needed companionship to so many, adding an extra voice to someone’s day when at times they may feel alone.    

My time at St. Michael’s taught me about the importance of community, and I have taken those lessons with me throughout my life—I do not take that for granted. For these workers, community is more important now than ever before and I have applied those beliefs to my traffic reports. As we continue to adapt to the changes of COVID-19 I am optimistic there is a light at the end of the tunnel. With enough self-discipline, focus, and commitment to work in our own unique ways we will beat this thing.

I hope radio, in all its changes, brings you that sense of comfort and familiarity we are all longing for. As I say after I end every week on-air, “Until next time, be safe out there and I’ll see you next week.”

SMC, can I get a Hoikity Choik on C?

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Maxine Webster serves as Advancement Officer, Alumni Engagement at St. Mike’s. She holds a B.A. in Media, Culture, and the Arts from The King’s College in New York City. 

Virtual Connections with St. Mike’s Alumni

Since starting work within the Advancement team two months ago I’ve come to appreciate the special nature of St. Mike’s.

I was initially drawn to the role based on the understanding that the College is supported by a loyal and generous community of alumni. And as someone who graduated from a small liberal arts college in a big city, I appreciate the juxtaposition of being part of a safe, tight-knit community while simultaneously being surrounded by the resources and opportunities a bustling city—and one of the world’s leading research universities—affords.

This is an interesting time to be working in university alumni relations, as so many things have shifted in the last several months due to COVID-19. Traditionally, St. Mike’s alumni would be looking forward to various in-person social events. On the flip side, alumni who may not have been able to access a local event in the past can now tune in, a unique opportunity to connecting with one another virtually.

So, while we all wait to return to “normal” when it is safe to do so, it is my job to engage and support the alumni community throughout this time—and I think we can all agree it is more important than ever to stay as connected to one another as we can.

Alumni volunteer activity is a critical asset to any university, and I am particularly grateful for the Alumni Association Board and Young Alumni Committee. These groups provide invaluable perspectives and insight as the mouthpiece for St. Mike’s alumni at large. Their contributions and ideas support the relationships between St. Mike’s and alumni, as well as within the alumni community, through alumni programming. They have a direct impact on the future of St. Mike’s. Right now, there is an opportunity and a priority to grow these groups to further represent the diversity and various backgrounds of the alumni body.

There are a couple of new virtual programs coming up. I am really looking forward to the St. Mike’s Alumni Workshop Series in partnership with the Office of the Dean of Students, where alumni who represent varying industries and experiences are meeting with a small group of current students over Zoom throughout February and into March. Each session is focused on a particular theme, such as “Finding a Job in a Difficult Market” and “Entrepreneurship.”

Another program in the works is a Faculty Speaker Series, a way to highlight and share St. Mike’s fantastic faculty and programming with all University of Toronto alumni through virtual presentations. We also look forward to traditional programming—the Lenten Retreat, Alumni Reunion, and Spring Convocation—done in new ways, for now.

Furthermore, I have been inspired by ideas alumni bring forth—from social media initiatives to thematic virtual events—and I am honoured to witness the progress that continues to take place at St. Mike’s, through St. Mike’s 180 strategic plan. I look forward to continuing to spend time in conversation with alumni in an effort to connect, learn, share ideas, and make plans.

More than anything, I realize time and time again what a special place St. Mike’s is. Stories of Catholic services and religious pursuits, campus life and community involvement, stimulating classes and academic advisors, all remind me that St. Mike’s is a place where some of life’s fondest memories have happened, and continue to happen. Even in the midst of a challenging season, I am constantly reminded that a strong alumni community makes for a stronger St. Mike’s.

If you would like to introduce yourself or get in touch with me about any of the things above (I really enjoy hearing from alumni!), you can reach out via email or phone (416.926.7260 ext: 67260).

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Kathryn Elton joined the University of St. Michael’s College in 2016, as Chief Advancement Officer, overseeing fundraising and alumni programming. One of the best parts of her work, she explains, is meeting and getting to know St. Mike’s incredible alumni community.

Remembering Long-time St. Mike’s Alumna Gloria (Chisholm) Buckley

The University of St. Michael’s College and University of Toronto communities lost a treasured friend with the passing of alumna Gloria (Chisholm) Buckley on January 25, 2021. Gloria, who graduated from St. Michael’s College in 1948 with a Bachelor of Arts and Science, majoring in chemistry, was a beloved alumni volunteer leader. She was also a trailblazer who shone a path for women in science and returned her good fortune by serving others.

When Gloria was presented with St. Michael’s Alway Award in 2014 she was celebrated as a “pioneering spirit, a scientist, working mom and community volunteer…at peace with both faith and science, a lifelong passion for knowledge, and thrilled by discovery. With a penchant for asking questions, a feminist before the movement began, a desire to contribute to saving lives, to fight for health and to understand the world at its most basic elements. She has lived up to the highest standards in numerous ways.”

Gloria’s accomplishments were extensive. She was:

• a researcher at University of Toronto and at St. Michael’s Hospital’s Lipid Centre
• a scientist in the private sector, including in bioscience and clinical chemistry specializing in cancer research
• a member of the Christian Family Movement—helping peers with children cope with the pressures of life while raising families
• a member of the Associates of the Sisters of St. Joseph for more than 25 years
• one of the longest-serving members of the U of T Senior Alumni Association
• the founder and leader of the organizing committee for University of St. Michael’s College Alumni and Friends Annual Lenten Twilight Retreat

 and

• the longest-serving Board Member of the USMC Alumni Association.

Gloria was also the proud mother of sons Roger, Brian, and Phillip, all of whom attended St. Mike’s.

She was a much-loved friend among the alumni community. St. Mike’s alumna Marcella Tanzola remembers:

“I had the honour of knowing and working with Gloria for many years on the St. Michael’s Alumni Board. With Father Bob Madden, we both helped to establish the Annual Twilight Lenten Retreat and worked closely over 25 years to make this a memorable and meaningful event. Gloria was a tireless worker and supporter of all alumni pursuits. For me she was a ready ear and good counsellor. We shared wonderful conversations during all those years and I learned what a remarkable woman she was as we exchanged our life experiences. Rest in a much deserved peace Gloria. I will miss you.”

Miriam Kelly, another alumna and colleague, adds:

“The Basilian Fathers, the University of Toronto and the University of St. Michael’s College, and the Annual Lenten Twilight Retreat will all be thankful for the many years Gloria gave to their many endeavours, sharing her wisdom, hospitality and sense of humour. Gloria will be much missed and remembered. Rest in Peace.“

When I joined St. Mike’s advancement and alumni programs team in 2016, all my new colleagues recommended that Gloria be one of the first alumni I should meet. She had a long-standing connection with St. Michael’s, deep commitment to the university, and astute perspectives on our past and our future. She was also a frequent attendee at alumni meetings and events, and I soon learned why she was loved by my colleagues. Betty Noakes, a member of our advancement team who knew her for more than 10 years notes that “Gloria’s kindness, knowledge, sage advice, and grace made the world a better place. She exemplified Goodness, Discipline and Knowledge. I will hold her in my heart, and miss her dearly, as will, I’m sure the community she has left behind.”

The University of St. Michael’s College is truly blessed by a loyal and committed alumni community, and I have a special place in my heart for Gloria. From our first meeting in fall, 2016 until our last conversation this past fall, when she was sharing ideas about St. Mike’s vision for the future, I have felt extremely lucky to have known her, even just a little.

Thank you Gloria. God speed.

Gratefully, Kathryn.

Alumni who wish to share memories and tributes to Gloria are invited to send messages to: smc.alumniaffairs@utoronto.ca. We will collect them and send them to the family.

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The author of our post for Bell Let’s Talk Day 2021, Therese Hassan completed both her undergraduate and graduate degrees at the University of St. Michael’s College. A recent graduate from the Master of Theological Studies program at the Faculty of Theology, she is particularly interested in Catholic philosophy of education, theology of ministry, and qualitative methods in religious studies. Therese is currently a Secondary School teacher with the Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board.

Talking About Fight Club to Stay Healthy

I recently assigned my students an adaptation of a “time audit” activity that Jay Shetty offers in his book Think Like a Monk. The premise of the exercise was that what we spend most of our time on essentially reflects what we value most. The idea was for my students to audit their time over five days to identify where most of their time was being spent. My students had to articulate what it is they truly value and whether or not the way they spent their time (especially amid a pandemic) truly reflected what they valued most. For most students, the realization set in that how they spent their time was disproportionate to what they outlined they truly valued.

As I listened to my students’ reflections on their time audit, several patterns emerged. Many of my students identified having valued their mental health but recognized that the way they spent their time did not necessarily foster positive mental health. Many voiced an intention to carve out more time in the day to spend on activities that would benefit their mental health, including less time on social media, more time meditating and praying, and more time being present with family (I know: amazing conclusions, right?). Interestingly, almost all of them felt guilty to some degree about not doing more with their time, considering the time at home the pandemic has granted. On this point, I could relate to my students more than they will ever know.

The truth is that the conclusions my students came to as a result of their time audit are as intuitive as they are appropriate to the unprecedented time we find ourselves in. As their teacher, I am essentially endowed with the responsibility to keep considerate of their mental health, offer information and resources on how to cope and who to talk to, and tips and tools in practicing self-care, all while standing as a pillar of poise, a model of “keeping it together,” a standard of composure even though I too share in the same struggle. It’s like having to prepare my students for a test I’ve never taken myself, in an area I haven’t yet achieved a level of expertise. Put all that against the backdrop of a pandemic, and it feels more like a fight; only it’s a fight I didn’t ever think I’d need to prepare for, let alone be responsible for in preparing others. I’m right there in the ring with everyone else trying to listen to coaching instructions.

Of course, I could never say this out loud. The first rule of fight club is you cannot talk about the fight club. If I talk about my struggle in the fight club, how can anyone find me dependable or reliable? What if I am seen as any less of a Professional? How do I continue to meet the needs of my students, friends, or family members in supporting their mental health while staying afloat myself? How do I talk about self-care amid a pandemic when I’m still trying to figure out a routine that works for me? How do I help the people around me continue to feel connected despite struggling from isolation and confinement myself?

Mental health is something for all of us to be concerned about. One of the most significant personal revelations I ever had on the topic was to learn that mental health and mental illness are not synonymous concepts but rather interconnected concepts that each span their own continuum. This means that not everyone with mental illness has bad mental health, and an absence of mental illness does not necessarily mean good mental health. There’s a line in Amanda Gorman’s poem The Hill We Climb where she talks about the nation before her as not a broken nation, but an unfinished one. Similarly, mental illness or the struggle with mental health doesn’t make us broken, but unfinished, a work in constant progress. Trying to work towards positive mental health is a struggle to be met by everyone at one point or the other. Meeting the expectations of self-care can and probably does feel near impossible with or without a pandemic. For that reason, we are literally all in it together even when we feel completely alone.

Despite it all, I am still trying to do it all. People depend on me. I am sure that many out there are doing the same thing, persisting and persevering because people count on them. If there is one thing I have learned, it is that, for whatever reason, knowing I’m not alone in the ring is a comforting thing. Storytelling is a magical device we have that dates back as far as the human community itself. Testimony and dialogue help us confront some of the harsh realities of the human condition at its deepest level, inviting us into a journey of “meaning-making” as we bear witness to the stories and experiences of those around us. If there is one thing I can say for sure, it’s that we need to feel empowered and empower others by and through witness and storytelling regarding our experiences and struggles with and of mental health. We need to normalize talking about this regardless of rank, position, gender, age, or creed.

They said that the first rule of fight club is to never talk about the fight club. Well, this is our fight club, and mental health is our ring. Whether one is giving or receiving support in dealing with mental health, we’re all in the ring, a human make-up of grace under pressure, each of us hoping that we or the ones we love can and will persevere through each second of every minute of every round. One of my own coaches from the ring often reminds me that, in our fight, we strive not to be perfect but to be balanced; constantly adjusting our footing to be as close to the centre point of love, family, friends, respect and humanity. We may sway, but we adjust, and we never fall completely.

And so, to that I say: screw the rules of fight club. Let’s talk about fight club. Let’s reflect on our own stories deeply and honestly. Let’s share our testimonies and open our hearts to the testimonies of others. In a time characterized by physical and social distance, let our stories and experiences of being inside the ring connect us like never before. Let’s talk not just one day a year but consistently and intentionally, because our lives depend on it. 

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Dr. Christopher Hrynkow holds a PhD (Peace and Conflict Studies, St. Paul’s College, University of Manitoba) and a ThD (Christian Ethics jointly awarded by the University of St. Michael College, the Toronto School of Theology, and the University of Toronto). Hrynkow is Associate Professor in Religion and Culture at St. Thomas More College, University of Saskatchewan, where he teaches courses in Religious Studies, Catholic Studies, Peace Studies, and Critical Perspectives on Social Justice and the Common Good. He presently serves as the founding director for St. Thomas More College’s new Centre for Faith, Reason, Peace, and Justice. Additionally, Hrynkow is Department Head, Program Chair, and Graduate Chair in Religion and Culture for the University of Saskatchewan.

A Culture of Care

COVID-19 has provided a real opportunity for us to pause and reconsider our ways of being in the world. Such reflection can bring into focus an important question for Christians, academics, and citizens today: what kind of world do we want to see after the pandemic? In considering adequate responses to this question, I know in my heart that we cannot go back to the status quo that existed in late 2019. First of all, especially after this dark winter, we will have lost too many folks who would have otherwise survived. As such, the world cannot ever be the same. Also, my faith along with my formal studies and research in areas including peace, education, and Christian Ecological Ethics have formed not only my mind but also my heart. The cumulative effect, in no small part as result of my experiences at St. Mike’s, is that I am certain we need a transition to more just and verdant ways of being in our religion, politics, education, and action in the world. Better choices in terms of what we select to revive and what we choose to leave behind in our cultures and societies as a result of the pandemic are required to participate in the necessary transformation. From a Christian perspective, this transformation is necessary to more fully accept Jesus’ call to be pilgrims for peace, justice, and the integrity of creation on Earth. Contemporary Catholic Social Teaching can provide a guide for this most important journey. In order to ground these opening points, please allow me to go deeper into one of the most recent examples of Catholic Social Teaching with my remaining space for this reflection.

Since Paul VI established the practice, each year and in anticipation of the World Day of Peace celebrated on January 1, the Catholic Bishop of Rome releases a message. In the 54^th message, written for 2021 during a time of global pandemic, Pope Francis addressed A Culture of Care as a Path to Peace. This example of Catholic Social Teaching is both innovative and important. Herein, like his predecessors, Francis considers peace as much more than the mere absence of war but as also including positively defined conditions like social justice, gender equality, care for creation, and, as he himself helped to bring into focus, cultures of encounter and dialogue. Indeed, by introducing “a culture of care” to Catholic Social Teaching, he is recalling his earlier reflections that align with, and enrich, the content of “cultures of peace” so important to peace studies. The concept of cultures of peace is both analytical and aspirational. It helps us to discern those ways that are helpful in cultivating cultures of peace. Additionally, “cultures of peace” provides a framework to exercise our moral imaginations in creative ways in order to provide a vision to drive the action of building substantive peace.

In accord with these intertwined features of cultures of peace and drawing lessons about caring for both each other and the rest of creation from the events of 2020, Francis offers “a culture of care as a way to combat the culture of indifference, waste and confrontation so prevalent in our time” (#1). Summarizing the doctrine of the Catholic Church in light of a culture of care Francis teaches, “this doctrine is offered to all people of good will as a precious patrimony of principles, criteria and proposals that can serve as a ‘grammar of care’: commitment to promoting the dignity of each human person, solidarity with the poor and vulnerable, the pursuit of the common good and concern for protection of creation” (#6). In this light, Francis articulates a duty to promote a culture of care “as a process of education” (#8) in a holistic sense that moves far beyond the four walls of the classroom to touch upon the duties toward the common good not only of teachers and professors but also of those of families, faith leaders, and politicians amongst others. For Francis, supporting the common good with a spirit of solidarity is particularly important at a time when “the massive Covid-19 health crisis…[is] aggravating deeply interrelated crises like those of the climate, food, the economy and migration, and causing great suffering and hardship” (#1). As such, the Pope teaches there can be no substantive peace without a culture of care, which “calls for a common, supportive and inclusive commitment to protecting and promoting the dignity and good of all, a willingness to show care and compassion, to work for reconciliation and healing, and to advance mutual respect and acceptance” (#9). These are prime ingredients for any recipe aimed at nourishing the incarnation of cultures of peace in this world.

To conclude, I would note that in framing cultures of care as a path toward peace Francis is implying there are other paths towards peace, a selection of which he has already engaged in other exercises of his teaching office, including with Laudato Si’ and Fratelli Tutti. Peacebuilding work is transformative because these paths of dialogue and action exist within a reality of integral ecology, where everything is interconnected, as Francis also notes in the 54^th World Day of Peace Message. Indeed, that connectivity means a culture of care is transformative whether it be incarnated in small doses like sharing nourishing food with a neighbour or in large doses like ensuring the just distribution of vaccines across both individual societies and the community of nations. Thus, if Francis’ teaching has resonance for you, the global pandemic is no barrier to the necessary transformative journey named in this reflection. In fact, despite its association with restricted movements, lockdowns, and curfews when viewed through a lens informed by a culture of care, COVID-19 actually serves to stimulate this transformative journey. It only remains for us to choose a path, or paths, to peace. Then, we begin, or indeed deepen, our work as pilgrims building up cultures of peace.

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Anne Louise Mahoney (8T4) lives in Ottawa. Her lifelong love of books and reading has brought with it countless gifts, including hours of happiness, lasting friendships and a career as an editor. (Photo credit: Photobin Photography)

Books—A Love Letter

I can’t remember not being able to read. Some of my happiest childhood memories are of traipsing off to the Gladys Allison branch of the Toronto Public Library every Saturday with my dad. My two older sisters and I would spend an hour or two in the children’s section, browsing, reading, choosing our books and waiting for Dad to come and get us after his own browsing in the grownups’ section. After checking out an armful of books each, we’d pile back into the car and head home to devour them. Then we’d do it all again the next Saturday. One of Dad’s greatest gifts to us was those weekly trips to the library. (Of course, he had a massive library at home, too. Any request for information for a school project would result in a stack of related volumes in 15 minutes or less.)

My love of reading only grew over the years. When it came time to choose a university program, all I could be sure of was that I wanted to read books all day. English literature seemed like the perfect choice. And it was! My professors at St. Mike’s were stellar—their lectures were imbued with their own irresistible passion for words and language. I had discovered a whole new world of kindred spirits.

When it was time to venture into a career, again all I could be sure of was that I wanted to read books all day. Before long I found myself editing non-fiction books for kids, then branched out from there. Over the years, I have been lucky enough not only to edit books, but to edit books on theology, spirituality, prayer, meditation, inspiring people of faith, and religious education for all ages. A feast for the mind, the heart and the soul.

You won’t be surprised to hear that COVID-related isolation has offered me more time to read. Although my local library in Ottawa was closed from March until November (even now, we can only drop off and pick up reserved books there), the e-books I borrowed kept me company, made me laugh, touched my heart and helped me cope. A few years ago, I remember hearing an interview with a woman who learned to read as an adult. Her comment has stayed with me: “I’ll never be lonely again.”

I think that’s the essence of it for me: reading connects me with other people. They may live in a different time or another place. They may be like me in some ways, or their experiences may be completely new to me. Yet for a few hours here and there, I become part of their world—and that changes me in some way. Studies have shown that reading fiction helps us become more empathetic: when we let ourselves enter into someone else’s life, we come to know their joys and sorrows so intimately that these almost become our own. We bring that understanding back into our daily lives, ready to share it with those we meet.

In The Library at Night, writer/editor/translator Alberto Manguel puts it this way:

Books may not change our suffering, books may not protect us from evil, books may not tell us what is good or what is beautiful, and they will certainly not shield us from the common fate of the grave. But books grant us myriad possibilities: the possibility of change, the possibility of illumination.

That spark of possibility is what led Dolly Parton to create her Imagination Library in 1995 in the county in Tennessee where she was raised. In 2000, the program went national; it’s now international. Children who are enrolled in this program get a book mailed to them every month until they turn five. As of 2019, the program had distributed over 125 million books.

Ernest Hemingway would probably have approved of Parton’s initiative. After all, he once said, “There is no friend as loyal as a book.” That’s why libraries are such an important part of our towns and cities. Many people I know were heartbroken when the libraries had to shut down this year. Libraries are so much more than buildings with books in them—they are places where people from all ages and backgrounds can gather, learn, share and yes, borrow books, all at no cost. Being cut off from that common space where everyone is welcome was a great loss for so many during a time of many losses and upheavals. In my neighbourhood, the scattering of Little Free Libraries gained many patrons over the past 10 months. In our online Buy Nothing group (where people post items to give away), books were a hot commodity—those lucky enough to get one of the books on offer promised to pass it along when they were done. (A few virtual book clubs even sprang from all those posts and the comments on them.) Kids’ books were in high demand.

Meanwhile, writers’ festivals and book launches found themselves going virtual—and welcoming people from around the world. I was able to see Marilynne Robinson (Gilead) and Margaret MacMillan (The War that Ended Peace) speak at the Ottawa International Writers’ Festival from the comfort of my own home. I also “travelled” to St. Mary’s College in Notre Dame, Indiana, to hear Tara Westover, author of the bestselling Educated: A Memoir, deliver the Christian Culture Lecture in September. It’s usually an in-person event, with about 1,300 people attending. This year, 35,000 people from a number of countries registered for the online lecture. For me, this is the power of books and stories: they bring us together across time and space.

I guess what it all comes down to is community—even when we have to be far apart.

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Nick Cotman did his undergraduate studies in philosophy and political science at the University of Ottawa. He then completed his Master of Theological Studies at St. Michael’s Faculty of Theology in 2019. It was at this time that he began working in the chaplaincy leader position at his alma matter, Holy Cross Catholic Secondary School in Kingston, ON.

Encountering Opportunity in Restriction

As we have come to expect from most things in 2020, public education in Ontario’s schools looks a little different from most years. In Kingston, secondary schools are following an octomester model, meaning that there is one class each day for 22 straight days. Lunch periods are staggered for each grade in an effort to avoid congestion around the school. Additionally, teachers are livestreaming their lessons to ensure remote learners are getting the needed material. All of these adjustments have required a significant mental and pedagogical reorientation from staff and students. Having only begun my high school chaplaincy career in the fall of 2019, and being out of the school by this past March, these first months back have felt more like the second volume of my first year as I relearn the role.

Being (physically) back in school has affirmed something I had been reflecting on since COVID first began to reshape our daily lives: that a single thing can be both restrictive and freeing. The colleagues and students I have the privilege of spending time with each day are showing me there are unexpected opportunities to be found in the constraints we are currently navigating. I think it is important to note, however, that any “pleasant surprises” we encounter in no way diminish or undermine the unique challenges each of us has faced. Nonetheless, we should acknowledge that by being forced to reconsider the way we approach many things, 2020 has also shed light on the shortcomings of previous practices and provoked new, more effective methods. Being in school has made this especially clear to me.

There are a few experiences I’d like to recount. The first is one which is bound up closely with my position in the school: the absence of school Masses. This has forced a significant shift in focus to other liturgical practices. I have been doing regular class visits to lead lectio divina readings and the Ignatian Daily Examen with students. Although we will be thankful when the day comes that we can celebrate Mass as an entire community, this unplanned hiatus has led me to recognize the richness of these other liturgical approaches. Mass in school was always an appreciated community event, but it was evident that further foundational efforts in spirituality and liturgical understanding would enrich the experience. The event of a school Mass may have become overly familiar, causing a lack of deliberate and reflective participation. J.R.R. Tolkien wrote that we often need “to clean our windows; so that the things seen clearly may be freed from the drab blur or triteness of familiarity.” This break may inadvertently serve as opportunity to form our liturgical sensibilities as a community through other practices, allowing us “to clean our windows,” and more fully appreciate Mass when we can gather once more as an entire community.

Another example that is small but noteworthy is the new inclusion of an end-of-day prayer. Prior to current circumstances, we would recite a simple grace over the PA before lunch.  Now, however, with each grade now getting out of class at different times, this was ruled out to avoid further interruptions. In the absence of a lunch hour prayer, we decided to begin doing a prayer at the end of the school day. This small change has been incredibly well received. We join in a meaningful prayer to give a definitive conclusion to the school day and to look forward to the evening ahead. This is a practice we will likely carry forward beyond these unusual circumstances, though we may have been unprompted to explore it without the current conditions.

Without Masses, retreats, or community outreach to coordinate, my priorities within the school have shifted. More than ever, it seems that chats in the staff room and chance encounters with students in the halls are of greater pastoral importance. When there was more room to complete tasks and plan outreach events, I began to let behind-the-scene to-do lists take the front seat. I’m thankful I’ve been required to shift my focus to relationships within the school. When things return to normal, I’ll be sure to maintain this focus.

There are an array of other instances I could talk about, such as our amended graduation ceremony, virtual coffee houses, and the music class using the cafetorium so as to social distance more effectively (allowing halls throughout the school to enjoy their practice). Students seem more open to seek me out to chat (though perhaps they just want out of class since they’re now in the same room all day!) and are displaying impressive consciousness of the well-being of those around them. They are dutiful in mask wearing, have embraced the octomester model, and even surpassed any previous food drives during our Thanksgiving collection.

These are all just small instances of the pleasant surprises I’ve seen over the past months. We have all encountered them in different ways, but I am especially thankful to see them occurring in Catholic education through the lens of chaplaincy. When we learn to embrace unanticipated circumstances, we can open ourselves up to viewing things in new ways and create room for God’s grace in areas we might lack control. In the chaplaincy work ahead, I’ll be sure to continue looking for the pleasant surprises and opportunities for growth that our current restrictions can bring.

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Nick Olkovich is an Assistant Professor and holds the Marie Anne Blondin Chair in Catholic Theology at St. Mark’s College in Vancouver. He completed three of his four degrees at the University of St. Michael’s College where he met his wonderful partner Julia, a graduate of Christianity and Culture and the Faculty of Theology, in a course exploring the thought of Bernard Lonergan.

Nick and Julia’s Victory Garden

I’m sitting in my living room looking at what’s likely to be the last tomato from the small garden we planted at St. Mark’s College here in Vancouver. Shortly after everything shut down on March 16, 2020—and well before the ground was ready in Toronto—Julia and I found ourselves sowing seeds—two types of lettuce, arugula, radicchio and puntarelle—and planting tomato, eggplant, pepper and cucumber seedlings.

Anxiously awaiting signs of germination and growth, we’d close our laptops around 5 p.m. every second day and drive up to the College to check on our pandemic garden. Slowly but surely our seeds sprouted and their shoots began to look like miniature versions of themselves. Within weeks we were eating arugula while Toronto was still under a pile of snow. Yet, our tomatoes had barely grown; the cucumber seedlings kept dying; and I was convinced that my pepper plants were shrinking. I was frustrated. Anxiety over the pandemic combined with the pressure to work harder and accomplish more. I was hard on myself like I was hard on the garden.

As the lockdown wore on, workdays and then weeks began to blur into one another and yet time stood still in a different way when we’d call it quits, earlier and gradually with much less guilt, and head up to the College. We’d go when we were miserable or angry with each other. It was quiet and it helped. We’d go on the weekends sometimes when the sun was shining and it helped even more. Julia needed her steps and so we’d walk after pulling weeds and talk in ways that our pre-pandemic weekdays never seemed to allow.

As time went on our near daily trips became routine. We’d pack our tomato ties, our scissors, and big ziplock bags that I’d wash after each use. Soon we lost access to a hose and so we started bringing a watering can that one of us would fill six or seven times behind St. Mark’s Parish whenever Fr. Rob wasn’t hearing outdoor confessions. As summer finally started to arrive in Vancouver the garden became a hot spot of activity. We met neighbours who told us they liked our greens (thanks?); neighbours we traded stories and plants with; other gardeners on the UBC campus who envied the shade our lettuce got; neighbours’ children and their pets. I began running into work colleagues, one who tended two of the College’s four garden beds, and others who still had access to the main building. These chance encounters and the short conversations they prompted—so everyday and yet so oddly meaningful—broke up the monotony of daily Zoom calls and online happy hours. Soon enough the garden started to produce and everyone we ran into or visited got a bag of lettuce or clippings of chard. What had started out as a pet project had become a way to connect.

In the end, not everything worked out. The eggplant and peppers never grew. Most of the tomatoes will never ripen. But over time my frustration with the garden turned to acceptance and then celebration. Look at all the delicious things we got out of two overcrowded and partly shaded boxes. Over time I’ve grown to be easier on myself and to celebrate all the little ways Julia and I have grown over the past six months. None of it was expected. None of it was easy. All of it was grace.

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Nisheeta Menon is a graduate of St. Michael’s Christianity & Culture program and holds a Master of Divinity degree from the Faculty of Theology. While studying theology she served as the Social Justice Co-ordinator and Student Life Committee Vice-President. She is now a high school Religion teacher in Mississauga, where she hopes to continue her co-curricular work serving her school community in the areas of equity and diversity education and chaplaincy.    

Wandering in the Desert

Autumn is a time of year I have always loved. As a student, I looked forward to transitioning back into school and the start-up of all of the clubs, sports, and activities. Now, as a secondary school teacher, my appreciation of this time of year has only increased. It is around this time that the life of a school starts to take shape—student leadership, chaplaincy, athletic teams, volunteer and outreach initiatives, arts programs, etc. Plans turn into reality and the school begins buzzing with activity, creativity, and life!

This autumn, as you might imagine, looks very different. The beginning of the school year was tumultuous, to say the least, and some of us only received our teaching assignments in late September. A number of teachers, like me, were designated to teach the online cohort and, with that, we have sunk into the routines of virtual teaching with considerable reluctance.

Students continue to be moved in and out of our courses due to a host of scheduling issues while the quadmester is rapidly progressing toward its end date in the second week of November. The tight timeline forces teachers to compress the curriculum, either speeding through important concepts or eliminating them entirely. The students “attend” class daily but are behind their screens while we are behind ours, and, even when our cameras are on, there is a palpable discomfort.

In a regular classroom, these students would know each other quite well by Grade 12, and they would continue to build connections with one another throughout their time in a class like mine. In the virtual environment, however, students in my classes are from all over the school board and, despite my efforts, their interaction is limited. As well, during the average school day, my colleagues generally remain isolated in their own classrooms (for good reason), leaving the staff lounge and department offices empty. The school is eerily quiet and the few faces you may pass are hidden behind masks. This is a far cry from the Thanksgiving liturgies, staff potlucks, and Student Council Haunted House tours of the past.

For most teachers, even those with in-class cohorts, the laments are the same: feeling disconnected from the students, being unable to teach and assess in an effective way, concern over students with access issues or learning challenges, and a general lack of guidance and support. At the same time, we watch the news as reports of COVID-19 cases in schools rise and we check in with some of our close friends and family as they await the results of their tests. We miss the loved ones who are outside of our social bubbles, and we worry about them, and ourselves. It is difficult to be hopeful.

One day, as I discussed these grim realities with a colleague, I confessed I was having a difficult time staying optimistic and energized, but that I was simultaneously feeling guilty about this because I also acknowledge how privileged I am in many ways. She offered one of the most helpful comments I have heard throughout this pandemic: “Of course you’re having trouble staying hopeful! What do you expect? We are the Israelites in the desert! This is not the Promised Land!”

Coincidentally, it was at that very time that I was in the midst of discussing the Exodus story with my Grade 12 Religion class. We had talked about how the Israelites in the desert must have felt a sense of hopelessness, fatigue, monotony, and an underlying fear that they might never actually reach the Promised Land. It is difficult to imagine that they ever woke up optimistic and chipper, ready to spend another day wandering in the desert!

During this pandemic, part of the struggle which so many of us put ourselves through is trying to make our lives as close to what they were pre-pandemic as possible. Of course, this is nearly impossible, and our failure to meet our self-imposed standards only heightens our anxiety. By acknowledging that we are “in the desert,” perhaps we can give ourselves permission to feel a little lost, at times hopeless, and generally unable to think more than a few steps ahead at any given time.

My most gratifying class thus far occurred when I shelved the curriculum for one day and chatted with the students about how I was feeling. As a teacher, and one of the only adult influences outside of their home they have regular access to right now, I know that modelling for my students the fact that it is okay to be struggling is perhaps the most important lesson that I can offer. After sharing with them a little about what was weighing on me, my students quickly piped in with words of validation and encouragement, which led to other students sharing their particular burdens, which in turn led to more encouragement from the group. Despite the distance between us and the glitchy internet connection, our discussion rolled on until the end of the period. There was laughter, exclamations of, “Oh my gosh! Me too!” and quiet, muffled sniffles at times. We never got around to our lesson on the Book of Exodus that day, and yet I am certain that we came to a better understanding of how the Israelites were able to survive—and find deep meaning in—their time in the desert together.

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Ten alumni of the University of St. Michael’s College have been named recipients of the Arbor Award, the highest honour granted by the University of Toronto. The award recognizes outstanding volunteer contributions to the life and mission of the university community.  

This year’s Arbor Award winners from the University of St. Michael’s College alumni community have helped coordinate initiatives that have funded major improvements for students, supported uniquely impactful programs and associations, and done much else to further the work and community of the university. Join us in congratulating the following recipients:  

Wendy L. Brennan (SMC 7T6) has been a volunteer supporter of the Friends of the Kelly Library annual book sale since 2008, serving since 2015 on the executive committee. With her help, the yearly sale has generated proceeds that have directly benefited St. Michael’s and UofT students through improving the Kelly Library’s physical spaces, updating library technology, and preserving and enhancing its collections.  

Susan Campisi (SMC 9T1) has since 2017 served as Awards Officer for the Dalla Lana School of Public Health’s Public Health Alumni Association. Through her leadership in the position and her membership on the board, the PHAA has grown stronger, and the awards process has become more efficient and streamlined.  

Rosa M. Del Campo (SMC 8T7) has supported the Rotman Commerce community through mentoring students, speaking on panels and moderating for events, and has offered her expertise and support consistently to both current students and alumni in the Rotman community.  

Lauren Della Mora (SMC 1T2) received a Fr. Robert Madden Leadership Award from St. Michael’s upon her graduation in 2012 in recognition of her service and leadership in the St. Michael’s student community. Since then, she has served a valuable role on the Dalla Lana School of Public Health’s Public Health Alumni Association’s board of directors, and provided mentorship and guidance to students through a variety of organizations at UofT including Women in Science and Engineering and the Faculty of Arts & Science’s Backpack to Briefcase program.  

Elizabeth I. Lee (SMC 0T5) has served the Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work Alumni Association in a volunteer capacity for the past five years, contributing her administrative talents as Secretary for the association from 2015 to 2018 and continuing to serve since then as a member-at-large.  

Dr. Mimi Marrocco (SMC 6T9) has served as her class representative since her graduation in 1969, helping to expand and strengthen the St. Michael’s alumni community. Since 2015 she has given tireless support to students in St. Michael’s Corporate Social Responsibility program, offering career advice, helping them to connect with the program’s alumni network, and lending her expertise in social responsibility, social impact and sustainability.    

Barry S. McInerney (SMC 8T5) has served as co-chair of the annual St. Michael’s Golf Classic since 2017, and in the role has helped to organize virtually every aspect of the event. Since its inception in 2000, the golf classic has raised more than $2.7 million to directly support St. Michael’s students.  

Joe G. Nizich (SMC 7T7) has helped coach the Varsity Blues Men’s Lacrosse team since 2006 and has been head coach since the fall of 2010. His dedication to the sport and to his student athletes testifies to his commitment to the education of the whole person.  

Laura A. Pasut (SMC 8T2) became president of the Department of Nutritional Sciences Alumni Association in 2018 following six years of providing mentorship to students and leadership in the association. She has been credited with helping to revitalize the association and has supported and provided guidance to many students studying in the department.  

Stephen T. Taborek (SMC 8T4) upholds the value of St. Michael’s approach to the education of the whole person by honouring its athletic tradition. He has supported St. Michael’s alumni and students involved in athletics by serving on committees for the Mulock Cup, Lex Byrd award, and Boozer Brown athletics reception, and helped to launch the Lex Byrd bursary for student athletes at St. Mike’s.  

________________ 

Since 1989, more than 2,300 alumni and friends have received Arbor Awards for their tremendous generosity and contribution to the experience of U of T students, faculty, staff and alumni. The award is the highest honour granted by the University and is given for sustained contributions to specific academic units, such as faculties, colleges or institutes, or for broader contributions to the University at large.  

Catherine Mulroney is a communications officer at the University of St. Michael’s College. She holds degrees in English and theology from St. Mike’s. This holiday, she is stopping herself from making too many pies.

Gratitude as Gift

This Thanksgiving, I choose to be grateful.

Gratitude may not be the first emotion that will come to mind for many of us this fall. If your holiday traditions include circling the dinner table with guests rhyming off the things for which they are thankful, you may have to dig a little deeper this year. I can’t think of a person I know who hasn’t been touched in some way by the pandemic, whether it’s by fears of job loss and economic instability, worries over the health and safety of loved ones, or a general sense of anxiety about the way forward to healthier, happier times.

For my family, this is our first Thanksgiving without my husband. Mike died the week prior to the pandemic lockdown, and we celebrated his life in Charbonnel Hall the day before the COVID restrictions began. Charbonnel seemed an ideal place for a memorial service because, although he wasn’t a St. Mike’s grad, he spent plenty of time on campus, first swinging by after work to pick me up in the COOP when I was an undergrad, then picking me up after classes when I returned to study theology, and finally re-arranging his drive home from the office to get me when I began working here five years ago.

At times, my family’s grief—both individual and collective—seems bottomless, our loss immeasurable. Heightening our mourning is the fact that we moved immediately from a celebration of life to a life of isolation, cutting us off from the ways in which people mark a death and find consolation. Yes, there were casseroles, but instead of inviting the consoling chef in for a visit, there would be a timid knock at the door and a wave from the driveway. There were mass cards, but no masses to attend. And as my children gradually returned to what passes for normal life these days, social distancing often cut us off from even the solace of each other’s company.

We do talk to each other, though—a great deal—and when we do we ponder the life of their father, our time together as a family during his illness, and, of course, happier times. It has been through these conversations that I am repeatedly reminded of the sacramental nature of gratitude.

To be grateful is to admit that our lives—and the people in them—are a gift. It is to acknowledge our own vulnerability and our deep need for connection. At its heart, gratitude signals an awareness of the grace that imbues our lives, allowing us to weather the most challenging of times and circumstances. It reminds us that this is not the end. Even in loss, we can acknowledge the richness of what we have received—and we can hope for the future.

Like so many other people this year, this will be a tough Thanksgiving for our family. Instead of adding an extra leaf to the table to accommodate the kids and their overflow crowds, I’ll be arranging only four settings, appropriately distanced. Two children will not be making it home for dinner this year. Mike’s spot will be empty.

But we will Zoom with extended family, and we will laugh, and we will tell stories. And through it all I will try to remain thankful—for the gift of a wonderful marriage to a great guy, and for our four children, who continue to remind me of Mike, whether by a facial expression, a turn of phrase, or by outrageously goofy behaviour.

When our oldest son was over recently to help me with some gardening, for example, he had one tree nearly felled before he realized he was cutting down my favourite lilac rather than the sizeable weeds that had sprung up from wandering maple keys.

Jake’s face showed his chagrin when he realized his mistake, his desire to help his mother having turned instead into something he worried would upset me. But suddenly his expression turned to one of amusement. “Hey,” he said, “didn’t Dad mow down your hydrangea the week after you planted it?”

When I confirmed the memory, Jake tilted his head and smiled. “Just like Dad!” he said. Yes, I thought, you certainly are. And so are your siblings.

This year, there will only be four places at our Thanksgiving table. Our lives are upended and not at all what we would have anticipated or asked for.

And in the midst of it all, I will choose to be grateful.

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Rev. Dr. Matthew Durham is a Roman Catholic priest and experienced hospice palliative care administrator. An alumnus, Fr. Matthew earned an MDiv and a DMin at the Faculty of Theology, and is currently the Executive Director, Hospice Palliative Care and Community Development for SE Health. Formerly, he was the Director of Community Engagement & Advancement at The Hospice of Windsor & Essex County Inc. This article was co-authored with Hana Irving, MA.

Helping the Most Vulnerable at the End of Life

While discussions of how to create a system that supports Canadians who wish to live and age at home have been at the forefront of health care agendas for decades, this discussion has only become more necessary in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Discussions of viral spread, social and physical distancing, the importance of wearing a mask, washing hands, and disinfecting surfaces to prevent infection have become commonplace in households nationwide. At the same time, as a society, we are becoming more aware of the social and economic disparities that have put certain vulnerable populations at greater risk.

Ubiquitous yet largely ignored, in every major city there are thousands of Canadians who are homeless and lacking access to adequate resources to follow public health guidelines about social distancing and hygiene (Jadidzadeh & Kneebone, 2020). Furthermore, people experiencing homelessness are often at greater risk for virus transmission due to crowded living conditions in temporary housing or shelters, or congregate settings, and overall face a 5–10 times greater mortality risk than the general population (Tsai & Wilson, 2020). Those risks only increase for individuals with compromised immune systems or who may be approaching the end of life.

For people experiencing homelessness, access to palliative care has traditionally been a challenge, which has only been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Hudson, Shulman and Stone (2017) note that

the delivery of high-quality care in mainstream settings for homeless people is complex for many reasons, including mistrust of health services, isolation, the impact and chaos associated with substance or alcohol misuse and, for some, alcohol-related early cognitive impairment. These factors, alongside the relatively young age at which homeless people may benefit from palliative care, means access to hospice and care homes is currently rare. As a result, homeless people often receive inadequate care and support. (p. 54)

This is a problem that Journey Home Hospice has been addressing for a little more than two years as Toronto’s only hospice serving homeless and vulnerably housed individuals. The hospice, which is a partnership involving Saint Elizabeth Foundation, Hospice Toronto, and Inner City Health Associates, provides 24/7 hospice palliative care, including complementary therapies to patients at the end of their lives, with a typical admission having a prognosis of approximately three months. More than pain and symptom management, Journey Home Hospice also offers formerly homeless patients the opportunity to experience “home,” sometimes for the first time in decades. The small clinical staff, complemented by specially trained volunteers, often become a “found” family for patients who are typically estranged from their loved ones. Volunteers especially fill an important role: reading stories aloud, singing favourite songs, cooking memorable dishes, playing cards, or even watching movies with patients.

Equally important, Journey Home Hospice becomes a place of healing, even as patients approach the end of life: regular meals; a clean, safe place to stay; coordinated pain and symptom management; programs such as art and music therapy, legacy work, and a visiting dog program all help patients to reconnect with their humanity after years of hardship and struggle. The psychosocial and spiritual care program also helps patients reconnect with loved ones if they wish and provides a welcoming space to express their faith or find a connection with their chosen religion.

Every patient who has stayed at Journey Home Hospice comes with a story. As each patient begins to feel at home, they will often share their story with a trusted team member or volunteer, and each life history comes with its own unique heartache. Whether fleeing an abusive family or relationship, struggling to cope with mental health issues and addiction, or facing financial setbacks from a divorce or workplace accident, our patients never intended to be homeless. However, once they found themselves without a permanent address, the struggle to find or maintain employment, save enough money for deposits on a new apartment, or even access social services became almost insurmountable challenges for many.

For many persons who have experienced homelessness, the overwhelming shame and fear associated with appearing “needy and dependent” prevents both men and women from asking for help. This is only compounded by our generally negative view of dependence and aging as a society. A recent study in Montreal found that individuals aged 50–64 were the largest growing demographic of the homeless population, as ageism often made it difficult to find new employment, and age prevented them from accessing social services and support programs designed for older Canadians (Burns, Sussman and Bourgeois-Guérin, 2018).

Journey Home Hospice becomes even more important in this context as a beacon of hope for patients, and as a potential teaching and learning facility on a local, national and international scale. Both from listening to our patients’ experiences and leading research into the factors affecting homelessness, we know that it is largely structural issues that cause and perpetuate homelessness. We are socially conditioned with capitalist values that emphasize individual responsibility, work ethic, and suggest that the only factor that determines success or failure is an individual’s motivation to work towards a goal. In reality, there are political and social factors that shape individuals’ access to opportunities, education, resources, and the necessary support and social services. Poverty and homelessness are closely tied factors that are caused by an inequitable distribution of wealth and opportunity (Murphy and Eghaneyan, 2018).

Our hospice is creating a truly safe space for people who have experienced homelessness, with a specially trained team able to respond to their unique life stories, physical, psychosocial and spiritual needs, as well as to offer care in a flexible environment responsive to the needs of the individual. COVID-19 has demonstrated more than ever that health care solutions in Canada must be innovative and responsive; we are proud that in the midst of this pandemic, not only have we been able to offer patients a safe respite at the end of their lives, we are also expanding to serve more people in the future. Currently, Journey Home Hospice is renovating our existing site to add six more hospice beds and hopes to be open in late 2020.

References:

Burns, V.F., Sussman, T & Bourgeois-Guérin (2018). Later-life homelessness as disenfranchised grief. Canadian Journal on Aging, 37(2), 171–184.

Hudson, B., Shulman, C. & Stone, P. (2017). ‘Nowhere else will take him’ – Palliative care and homelessness. European Journal of Palliative Care (24)2. 54.

Jadidzadeh, A. & Kneebone, R. (August 2020). Homeless shelter flows in Calgary and the potential impact of COVID-19. Canadian Public Policy. S160–S165.

Murphy, E.R. & Eghaneyan, B.H. (2017). Understanding the phenomenon of older adult homelessness in North America: a qualitative interpretive meta-synthesis. British Journal of Social Work, 48, 2361–2380.

Tsai, J. & Wilson, M. (April 2020). COVID-19: a potential public health problem for homeless populations. www.thelancet.com/publichealth (Vol 5). e186–e187.

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Betty Noakes has been a proud employee of St. Michael’s College since 2009. She has served as Alumni Affairs Associate, responsible for numerous alumni and community events for many years, and, most recently, as Advancement Associate, responsible for donations processing and donor stewardship. Betty earned her BA in Social and Cultural Anthropology from St. Mike’s/UofT in 2013, crossing the stage at Convocation Hall at the age of 50, finishing off studies that were postponed in the 1980s. One of the greatest joys of Betty’s work has been interacting with and getting to know many St. Michael’s students, alumni and friends. Betty is also one of the human caretakers of Toby, the 11-year-old Newfoundland/Labrador dog and, most recently, nine-week-old Baco the kitten. 

A Family’s Best Friend Gets a Pandemic Pal

Toby, our big brown Newfoundland and Labrador mixed-breed dog, came to us 10 years ago when he was just a year old. We found him on Kijiji a few days after our family dog Jake passed away. Losing Jake, our family felt anchorless. We had always had a dog, and we felt so incomplete. Our cat Luke missed having his dog friend to chase around the house, to torment, and to cuddle with during the day when the humans were away. We wanted a dog who was large and gentle and who would enjoy time with our family at our cottage on the Crowe River. A dog who loved water would be best, and we thought love of water would be ingrained into a Newfoundland and Labrador’s DNA. We were right about that!

Toby’s previous home had been in a high-rise apartment in the GTA where, during the day and for most of the night, he was kept in a crate. His previous owner had to move and so put Toby up for sale. Lucky for our us! We like to think lucky for Toby as well. From the very beginning Toby loved us and we loved him. It wasn’t long before he became well known in our neighbourhood from his walks and visits to the local park, as he would greet everyone with a tail wag and a smile and could get along with most other dogs. For the past several summers, Toby has become infamous on his stretch of the river by our cottage where he stands in the water for hours on end “fishing,” often mistaken for a bear by passing boat traffic.

Toby and his cat Luke were best buddies, and often curled up together to sleep in Toby’s favourite chair. After long days at work or at school each of us would be greeted with such excitement! It was as if he had been waiting for our return all day. These greetings and the kisses that came with them were magic, and helped us leave the stresses of our days at the door. Evening time was always a flurry of supper preparations and clearing, homework, chores, and a walk for Toby. Afterwards, when things quieted down for the night, Toby would stretch at our feet and receive pats and scratches, with Luke snuggling in my lap as we read or watched TV.

As the years ebbed on, Toby was always at or under our feet or by our sides. When he sensed we were sad or when things were not going our way, he would put his big chin on our laps or rub against our legs and we would automatically reach out for the comfort of patting him, without even realizing we were doing it. Toby always seemed to know when anyone was sad and needed an extra bit of his gentle, unconditional love.

It’s been 10 years since Toby arrived, and our two sons have grown. One of Toby’s human brothers moved away and Luke the kitty recently went over the rainbow bridge. These changes came in the winter of 2019 and were hard on Toby. He missed the human who grew up with him and he kept looking in the vacated room, sometimes just sighing heavily and lying on the floor of that room, waiting for his brother’s return. When his cat brother passed on, Toby was extremely sad, looking for Luke in all his favourite spots, and cuddling with the cat’s abandoned stuffed toys. Toby was depressed and seemed to lose his enthusiasm for things that used to give him so much joy. We tried to pat him even more and show him extra love, but he just seemed so sad, so despondent, although he went along wagging his tail, likely for our sakes.

Then suddenly, about six months ago, things changed again in Toby’s world. We humans stopped going out every day and stayed home most of the time. All of the sudden there were more walks and more pats on the head! We humans who were left in the house, however, seemed sad and worried to Toby, as we sat more in front of the TV news shaking our heads. Toby became even more attentive to us, sensing we needed to pat him, and hoping we needed to go out for another walk soon. It seemed to help Toby’s sadness having us around so much, and we sure know it’s been a big comfort to pat him, to walk him, and to look into his big kind brown eyes full of unconditional love for us. We pat him and we feel our worries ebb away; worry and concern for his needs takes us out of ourselves a little bit.

Though Toby has been busy looking after us the past six months, he still seemed a bit sad, and still went to the same spots looking for Luke the cat. But recently, the opportunity to give a new kitten a home presented itself. We jumped at the chance to give a home to a cute little kitten born in a barn in a vineyard. We’ve named the kitten Baco, after the delicious Baco Noir which hails from his birthplace.

For now, Toby and Baco are sniffing at—and closely keeping an eye on—each other.  Over the past few days, Toby has an extra spring in his step, although for now it may be the prospect of humans leaving open the door to the room where the cat food is, giving him the opportunity to gobble it up before we or Baco know what is happening. Or it may be the realization that in Baco he has a new friend to commiserate with about the humans, to share toys and to cuddle with—and eventually to keep him company when the days return that prompt the humans go back to being away from home for hours on end.

For now, though, Toby is delighted to lie at our feet and let us pat him while he sniffs at the kitten swatting at his nose from my lap.

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Rachel Ottenbreit is a St. Mike’s alumna and former staff member, and is currently studying theology at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome.

Doubling Our Joys and Halving Our Sorrows

In Italy, the lockdown began in March. Things closed fast, and although it felt like a total shutdown from the beginning, every week brought new restrictions. Parks, schools, churches, and businesses were closed; travel, group meetings, and “playing” (not ironic quotes: that’s the word the ordinance used) were banned; we could leave our houses only for emergencies, and then alone and with a paper justifying what we were doing on the street. Jane Austen might have said we were “in the middle before we knew we’d begun,” and Shakespeare that “there are more kinds of lockdown and quarantine, Horatio…”

The consequences of these closures are so varied. Surprisingly there were unexpected joys. Yes, although dolphins may or may not have returned to the canals of Venice (reports vary and I didn’t see it myself), those canals are definitely clearer and wildlife have been exploring our cleaner, quieter world. Joys erupted on a personal level too. I got to watch my aunt’s wedding in June and one of my best friend’s this last week. I couldn’t have flown home for either, so those live streams were pure, unexpected gifts.

In Diary of a Country Priest, Georges Bernanos writes that soldiers at the front cannot desert: “A chest is a chest when you get to the trenches. And one less counts!” That is, in the trenches you can literally take hits for others. Once you’re there, whoever you are, you do whatever you can do because whatever you can do makes a difference.

This is not to say that I’ve taken many hits myself. I’ve been very fortunate to live with other people, good friends, in the middle of this. We have good WiFi and a garden we can go to for fresh air and exercise. And our university bent over backwards for us (even couriering library books we requested, as long as that was possible).

But being restricted earlier and more severely than other countries, missing more than one family member who planned to visit this spring, helping people pack up and go or find ways to stay because they couldn’t leave, and grieving with close friends, many of them, who’ve lost family members and can’t go home…yes, while there were unexpected joys, there has also been an expected sorrow.

I started checking in with friends back home in their own trenches. Between the people I wrote to and those who, reciprocally discovering the same idea, wrote to me, throughout this time I’ve been in touch with more old friends than any time before. Though officially isolated, I knew I wasn’t alone, and I hope they did too. This has been another joy.

For me, as for many believers around the world, it was incredibly difficult to go without religious services—in my case, Mass and Confession. But it’s also been incredibly moving to see Pope Francis doing everything he can so that we Catholics, we anyone, aren’t alone. He really shouts it from the rooftops: we are not alone and we need never be. To remember him walking through Rome’s tragically empty streets praying for all those suffering, and giving his hopeful, consoling “to the city and to the world” blessing still calls forth thankful tears. That’s the front line, and I’m so thankful that he’s there.

All in all there are so many blessings. It has become much more obvious that we’re in this, in life, together. We don’t need a pandemic to take hits for each other. We can double our joys and halve our sorrows together. In the middle of this mess, that’s something to be grateful for.

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Dr. Stephanie Rutherford is an alumna of St. Michael’s College (BA 1997) and is now an Associate Professor in the School of the Environment at Trent University. Her work is interdisciplinary, focusing on the intersections among the environmental humanities, animal studies, and cultural geography. She is the author or co-editor of three books that consider these themes, the most recent of which is Historical Animal Geographies (2018). She is currently writing a new book on the history of wolves in Canada for McGill-Queen’s University Press. You can learn more about her work here.

Letting Go of the Treadmill of Productivity; Or How to Finish a Book in a Pandemic

The book was already late when the pandemic hit. Of course, being late is nothing new to most academics; we are often scrambling to meet—and missing—writing deadlines. Teaching and administrative work often take precedence during the term; bite-sized articles seem more doable over big projects.

But this was a big project that needed finishing. I’ve been working on this book about wolves for about eight years now. Eight years is a long time for any project; it starts to feel like it’s strangling you. The funding has elapsed. People keep asking when the book is going to be done. I started to be called the wolf lady, and not just behind my back. It was time to move on.

Last year I decided it was a good idea to seek a book contract to impose a deadline since I couldn’t seem to meet my own. It seemed like a smart thing to do—adding pressure from an outside source—as if the reason I hadn’t completed the book was out of slothfulness instead of being pulled in a variety of academic and administrative directions. It’s the curse of academia: you are never doing enough, publishing enough, or reading enough. It’s a feeling bred in PhD programs that lasts throughout your career, if you let it. Shame is not only the purview of my Irish aunties; it’s also the handmaiden of neoliberal academic life.

So, I got my contract and I had a June 2020 deadline. Then the pandemic hit. My 9-year old started school from home and in many ways that became my full-time job and my actual job began happening in smaller chunks and much later at night.

Of course, this has been the reality for many parents, and the effects can be quite gendered. For instance, there have already been a fair number of stories about how women academics have slowed their research output while men have sped theirs up during COVID. Guiliana Viglione in a Nature article tells us women are starting fewer new projects. Diane Peters in University Affairs writes that women’s research has been “squeezed” by the pandemic. I have received invitations to complete three surveys meant to measure my own gendered lack of productivity, which have only succeeded in making me feel that the authors of these surveys are much more productive than I am. My fabled life of the mind has been replaced by the life of “Mom, can I have a snack”? So it goes.

But I have discovered, amid a fair amount of frustration, that I can work in new ways to accommodate our present reality. They aren’t ideal; right now, I often write in short chunks, bookended by swims and bike rides with the best kid I know. And I’m lucky. I don’t have to do this while worrying about my job, or my partner’s job. It also helps that I have the security of tenure. My research can be put on hold in ways that more precarious faculty could never consider. Neoliberal academia once again.

But I’ve realized something that feels significant in my own understanding of the kind of academic life I want to lead. If my project was new, this approach wouldn’t be tenable. It seems those eight years of researching and pondering might, in this strange time, be an advantage rather than a liability. Put differently, maybe it pays a little to be late (don’t tell my mom) and engage in a kind slow scholarship, one that allows for a capacious openness to the kinds of ideas that might sometimes be missed when the treadmill of academic production has to be so very fast. At the very least it allows you to dig deep. In this way of thinking, instead of too long, eight years might seem like just about the right time, at least for me and at least with this project. The pandemic graced me with the ability to let go of the shame that goes with an obsessive emphasis on academic productivity, and embrace being present for myself and my family, as well as my work. In doing so, I learned to love those wolves again, which is really how this whole project started.

It turns out that letting go of that shame was perhaps just what I need to do. Just before writing this short reflection, I completed the draft of the book, late again but done this time. It feels great; it’s time for someone else to worry about it. So now I’m going to go enjoy another swim with my kid, because as Rabbi Harold Kushner famously noted “No one ever said on their deathbed ‘I wish I’d spent more time at the office’.”

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Laurie Morris is communications director at the University of St. Michael’s College and the proud owner of a Conklin Carnival t-shirt. She holds a B.A. in English from UofT and a certificate in Corporate Social Responsibility from St. Michael’s. 

Do You Want to Go Faster?!?!?

In the five months since most of the country went into collective lockdown, there have been countless memes and chin-stroking think pieces about the effect of COVID-19 on our perception of the passage of time. March went by in a millisecond, April lasted 1100 days and now, according to the Gregorian calendar at least, the end of summer is upon us. But how will we know the summer’s over if we can’t go to the Ex?

For as long as I can remember, going to the Canadian National Exhibition in Toronto has been a welcome but bittersweet segue between seasons. Even when I lived in New York, I’d factor the dates into my vacation calendar. It would never be the primary reason for a return visit to Toronto, but it never fell off the radar either. The CNE was something that kept me strangely anchored to “home.”

I’m sure most of us have a mental reel of Exhibition highlights. For me, it includes Holly Hobby doll prizes, huge boxes of Double Bubble gum (100 pieces at once!!) and the Polar Express guy who keeps asking if you want to go faster. And, of course, the thrill of discovery in the “oddities and novelty” factor—the invisible dog, Labatt Blue tube socks and, more recently, a larger-than-life sculpture of Justin Trudeau made entirely of butter.

But when it comes down to it, the lure of the CNE (at least for me) was less about what actually happened there and more about the promise of one last chance to exhaust the potential of summer, complete with corn dogs and top hats emblazoned with glitter. A trip to the Ex offered an opportunity to embrace simple, silly pleasures and a brief distraction from the more serious business of “getting down to business” in the Fall.

COVID-19 has challenged us in unexpected ways. Among other things, it’s called us to be flexible, patient and quick to realign expectations to find the best path forward—arguably some of the same skills required to scale the shifting steps of the Fun House.

But as much as the virus has us taught us about masking, distancing and cleaning, it’s also given us the opportunity to be creative and impressively resilient. Not nearly as satisfying as corn dogs, but important to recognize nonetheless. Many of the usual milestones and markers that we’ve depended on to bridge transitions and provide a sense of renewal don’t work well in a time of social distance and sanitization.

So this year, we have to draw on lessons learned from CNEs past and COVID present. As we head into Fall, give yourself permission to embrace silly, simple pleasures and to delight in the smallest things. The gates of the CNE are temporarily closed but we can still make the trip.

(Contributor’s note: No invisible dogs were harmed in the making of this blog post.)

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Fr. Don McLeod is a Basilian priest, an alumnus of USMC (College and Faculty of Theology) and a member of the Collegium since September 2013, serving as Chair from 2017 until the present. He has a particular interest in institutional governance and in ensuring that the proper role of the Collegium in University governance is clearly outlined. He has taught and been an administrator at both the high school and university levels, most recently at St. Joseph’s College in the University of Alberta. He continues to exercise his passions for aviation and cycling, Catholic Social Teaching and the study of Scripture and Biblical languages, while residing with the Basilian Fathers of Presentation Manor in Scarborough.

“Piloting” USMC

Two or three weeks ago, someone asked me if serving as Chair of the Collegium was burdensome, especially during the current COVID-19 crisis. After a few moments’ reflection, I replied that although Collegium had recently had to confront some very challenging issues, I would not describe my role as “burdensome.” To the contrary, the past four-plus months have been challenging but not burdensome.

To help clarify, permit me to draw an analogy with aviation. When people learn that I am a licensed pilot, they often ask if I fly solo—to which my usual response is “yes and no.” “Yes,” if that means that I am the only person in the aircraft. “No,” if the implication is that no one else is involved in a flight. Although it sounds counter-intuitive, even if the pilot is the only one aboard the airplane, there is no such thing as “solo.”

Most people who fly commercially know that a safe and successful flight requires professional pilots “up front,” equally competent and professional flight attendants in the cabin and good ground crew—and that is certainly true. However, there is much more to aviation than that.

First, even a small aircraft comes with a very detailed Pilot’s Operating Handbook—in the case of the Cessna 172, the aircraft I fly, nearly 200 pages of very dense information. Included in this are several checklists covering nearly every conceivable situation, from before engine start through to shutdown—and the pilot who ignores or omits even parts of these does so at his or her own risk. These documents reflect literally thousands of person-hours of designing, building and testing, without which no aircraft ever makes it to the flight line, let alone into the air.

Further, behind the scenes of any safe flight are the people who service the aircraft and keep it airworthy. This includes mechanics, dispatchers, fuelers, cleaners and airworthiness inspectors—all of whom are required to ensure that the aircraft is indeed safe to fly.

Most of my compatriots fly out of and into what in Canada are known as certified aerodromes—airports, for short. These facilities require ongoing maintenance to ensure that taxiways and runways are safe and clear of any debris, including snow and ice in winter, that pavement markings including runway numbers are clearly visible and that all ground signage is accurate. Much of this work goes unnoticed but is essential to safe operation—and is regularly inspected.

Once the aircraft is ready, the airport safe to fly out of, the pilot (and maybe passengers) belted in and the engine started, the pilot is still dependent on many people to ensure a safe flight. If the airport has traffic controllers the pilot must obtain clearance both to taxi and to take off and must rely on the men and women at the other end of the radio waves to ensure safe separation of all aircraft. Even at an uncontrolled airport, the pilot must rely on other pilots and even people on the ground to advise of their positions and intentions. The same is true, in reverse order, when preparing to land.

In short, from long before engine start to after shutdown, safe and enjoyable flying is dependent on the skills, attentiveness and commitment of a significant number of people filling a wide range of roles—the pilot is one of these people, undoubtedly an essential cog in the machinery, but far from being the only one. In other words, the pilot in reality is never “solo.”

To return to my analogy, one could suggest that the Collegium, and in particular the Chair, might be viewed as the pilot who is charged with ensuring that the University is able to fulfill its mission. However, just as with the pilot of an aircraft, a successful “flight” of the University is dependent on the commitment, dedication and competence of many more persons than the relatively few that a casual observer might see seated at the Collegium table.

This has been even more apparent to me as we have dealt with the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. From the very beginning, every member of the USMC community, regardless of their particular role, has given more than generously of their time and talent to ensure that we “fly” successfully through this unprecedented turbulence. I may by analogy be one of the “pilots” for this adventure but am well aware of the enormous debt of gratitude my colleagues and I owe to so many who have contributed to our safe and level “flight.” To them I say simply, “Thank you!”

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Matt Doyle, Advancement Officer, Special Projects, has worked in the St. Michael’s Advancement Office for eight years, involved with a range of alumni and fundraising projects. A graduate of U of T (UC), he has studied business and project management. He lives in a place with way too many books and no television.

Living with Books

A good friend of mine once said “you live with books,” and that sentiment has resonated with me, as I’ve been working from home for nearly four months now, surrounded by my books. COVID-19 has given me more time to spend with them, gazing at their spines neatly lined up on the shelves, knowing which ones have been read and which others will be enjoyed in the future. I’ve finally found the time to alphabetize them all.

I shared that statement with someone last year and she looked at me quizzically, wondering what I meant. For the bookworm like me, it made perfect sense, with no need for an explanation. Books are different than art. Art hangs on the wall, but books are something special in your house. They’re there to be enjoyed—pulled off the shelf, returned, moved around, sorted, read, and re-read.

One author represented on my shelves is Morley Callaghan, an alumnus of St. Mike’s who graduated in 1925. Sadly overlooked today, and more remembered for knocking down Ernest Hemingway in a boxing match refereed by F. Scott Fitzgerald, at one time Callaghan was one of the most popular novelists and short story writers in Canada. His novels and stories are written in a deceptively straightforward style which belies the deeper moral concerns underpinning each one. Toronto was still very much a part of the British Empire in the 1930s, and Callaghan’s dramas focus on the Catholic minority in a city that was beginning to lose it homogeneity.

Callaghan’s career began while he was an undergrad studying at St. Mike’s, writing for the yearbook, submitting short stories to publishers, and penning articles for the Toronto Star. Besides his writing, Callaghan also organized the St. Mike’s Literary Club, where he chose the books and plays to be read by the other students, with a heavy bent to the modernist writers who were his near contemporaries. Conrad, Fitzgerald, Tarkington, Galsworthy, Shaw, and O’Neill were some of the authors Callaghan chose, all of whom were giants in the early 20^th-century literary world. One wonders if the Basilian Fathers who were teaching at the school knew who Callaghan was encouraging his fellow students to read.

Debating was a popular activity on the U of T campus in the 1920s, and Callaghan was a member of the St. Michael’s team that won several debates, which would help his studies when he went to Osgoode Hall Law School after he graduated. It should also be mentioned that St. Mike’s was not only the place where Callaghan started his literary career, but he was also awarded for his boxing skills while at the college, which would come in handy when he was later challenged to that bout by Hemingway.

That’s one of the things I enjoy most about working in the Advancement Office at St. Mike’s—learning the rich traditions and stories of the College’s nearly 170-year history. The pandemic has prevented our usual in-person events from happening, including Alumni Reunion, when alumni are invited to return to campus. I miss meeting with our alumni and hearing their stories about their time at St. Mike’s. I know it’s only temporary, and our alumni will be back on campus soon. Our recent grads are our newest alumni, and who knows—maybe someday one of them will be Canada’s most popular author.

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Luis Filipe graduated in 2006 with an Honours BA in History and Linguistics, and then completed a Bachelor of Education degree at OISE in 2008. He has been teaching for 12 years in the Toronto District School Board, the last three at Bloor Collegiate Institute as Department Head of Social Science, where he teaches law and history, and coaches girls’ soccer. He is also the president of the Toronto History, Humanities, and Social Science Subject Council.

A Father’s Inspiration

Navigating life through the new normal of social isolation and distance from family and friends has been challenging. In many ways my relationship with the world is linked to my father. The places and people I know all circle back to him. No place better exemplifies this than the University of St. Michael’s College.

My family is made up of a different kind of alumni. My father, Manuel Filipe, started working at St. Mike’s in 1975, eight years before I was born, first as a night caretaker, and then later as Senior Supervisor of Facilities & Services. In those early days he worked alongside my great-uncles and aunts—the patriarchs and matriarchs of our family—who arrived in Canada with the first wave of Portuguese immigration in the 1950s. So while I was the first in my family to attend as a student, I was the third generation to be a part of the SMC community.

As a child, I would visit St. Mike’s regularly with my father. Our weekends were bookended by trips to lock up Carr and Alumni Halls, shut off the lights in Brennan Lounge, and close the Elmsley and Alumni parking lots. Nights would end with a walk together to Dufferin station, where we awaited my mom’s return from work at St. Mike’s, or carrying me to bed after I inevitably fell asleep on the drive home when we picked her up directly. The college was where I watched my father play table tennis tournaments; where I spent March Break changing batteries and reprogramming electronic residence locks with him; accepting rosebud chocolates from the wonderful Mrs. Lee in Carr Hall when he wasn’t looking; and organizing keys and envelopes before the start of each school year. Like any home, the college also bore witness to more painful memories, like when, on my first day as an SMC student, I approached my proud father on the third floor of Alumni Hall to share the news that his father, my grandfather, had died earlier that morning in Portugal. All these experiences are the landscape of my life.

So much of what I know about my father as a person is shaped by his relationship to his work at the college. My father doesn’t have many friends outside of its buildings; he doesn’t go out or really have any hobbies. His role at St. Mike’s was an inextricable part of his identity. He is proud of the work he did each day and proud of the life it provided us. It gave him a chance to serve a community, and Catholic faith, he cared about deeply. As I grew older, and my father’s academic expectations came into greater focus, the relationship I had with my father and the college helped to make me feel at home on campus, as a student carrying the weight of my entire family’s academic expectations. It’s easy to see yourself belonging in an institution when you have already been in its buildings.

My father has been retired from St. Mike’s for 11 years now, but that relationship remains an influence in our lives, as father and son. Almost two years ago I also became a father, when my son Mateo was born. I have thought a lot about the relationships my son will forge through me, the way I did with my father. Before the pandemic, my son regularly visited me at Bloor Collegiate Institute, where I teach, interacting with staff and students alike. In those exchanges I caught myself thinking back to those early days at St. Mike’s, where I was carried around campus by my father, meeting the Professor Ann Dooleys and Father Maddens of the world. I wonder whose names my son will remember, and what memories will linger for him.

So while there is some physical separation between us today, because of social distancing, our experiences and memories remain connected, and centred on the college. I’m looking forward to visiting St. Mike’s some day again soon with my father, but this time with his grandson in tow, watching the two of them share spaces he and I did so many times before. And maybe after this is all over, our family’s presence, and my father’s connection to St. Mike’s, will grow by another generation.

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Educators and alumni members John B. Kostoff and Patricia Dal Ben are the authors of One Home at a Time: Realizing and Living Out Our Domestic Church, Novalis 2019. John, who is the Executive Director of the Ontario Catholic Supervisory Officers’ Association, graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in 1977 and now serves as a member of the University of St. Michael’s College Collegium. Patricia, who is Curriculum Consultant: Religious Education, Family Life and The Arts with the Halton Catholic District School Board, graduated with a Master of Theological Studies degree from the Faculty of Theology in 2017.

Building the Domestic Church

Since the beginning of this pandemic, home is where we have been called to “stay safe” and where we have been staying for weeks on end. Home has never meant so much to so many people. It is the place we have baked, binged, and worked. It is the place we have homeschooled and the place where we have celebrated virtual mass. It is also where we have wept and worried and then worried some more. So how has your notion of home changed during this time? Or has it?

Long before this pandemic, home was, in part, where mass was celebrated; not the way we celebrate it today or with hope in the near future, in our bricks and mortar churches, but celebrated nonetheless. The Apostles sat in the upper room after the crucifixion trying to reimagine what this “new” life was going to look like. Luke the Evangelist recounts in the Acts of the Apostles that “Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home.” (Acts 2.46a) The Catechism of the Catholic Church also reminds us that,

“In our own time, in a world often alien and even hostile to faith, believing families are of primary importance as centres of living, radiant faith. For this reason, the Second Vatican Council, using an ancient expression, calls the family the Ecclessia domestica.” (1656).

The home church or domestic church has a long-standing tradition in our faith experience, and this notion was reignited by Bishop Fiordelli at the Second Vatican Council. St. John Paul II called the family “another invaluable expression of the apostolate of families” (Letter to Families, p. 16, 1994). The Church has continually valued and called on the faithful to create anew the reality of being home.

Article after article, post after post, people are reaching deep to look at what matters and realigning how we project into the world and how we deal with all that is happening and all that is still unknown. Missing our churches, the community, THE celebration is important, but never has there been such a time to reinvigorate our home churches. What we do now in our domestic church will have a profound effect on the future of our universal Church. We have a responsibility to develop the domestic church as authentic projections and expressions of our collective baptismal call.

As we celebrate Pentecost and the birthday of the Church, let us not forget how important that first house church was, and the responsibility we all have to nurture and support that growth and faith development in our own homes with the people we call family. The domestic church has been instrumental in laying the foundation of what is most important to this temporal life. From those early moments of gathering and now, thousands of years later, without a church building or the ability to gather in our places of worship—how then do we claim to be Catholic? How do we delineate in our homes that our faith tradition matters? The new evangelization has come to us in a bold and enticing way. How we understand what is happening in our world will forever change how we participate in Church. There has never been a better time to be taking stock of our domestic church so that when we unite once again to the source and summit we will have done our best to proclaim as good and faithful servants in our homes and beyond.

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Grace McSorley (USMC Class of 1995) is a lawyer and Deputy Ombudsman at the Ombudsman for Banking Service and Investments. She is currently on the USMC Senate and previously served on the Collegium as a student and later as an alumni representative.  

A Virtual Check-in with Classmates

Hello St. Mike’s community!

Since we can’t catch up in person at reunion this year—and by now most of us are “zoomed-out”—it is great we can use the St. Mike’s blog to hear about what people are thinking and how they are doing. I thought I would share my experience as a work-from-home parent during the COVID-19 crisis.

My husband, Michael McCarthy (USMC Class of 1994), and I are fortunate in that we are both able to work from home. I work at OBSI, the Ombudsman for Banking Services and Investments, a not-for-profit that resolves disputes between banking and investment firms and their clients when they can’t resolve them on their own. This is a busy time for us, and for our stakeholders. Fortunately, OBSI had practiced a scenario where we would have to work from home on short notice, so our transition was seamless and our work was not interrupted.

Things were not as seamless on the domestic front. The day the COVID-19 shutdown started, our laundry machine broke so, for the first three weeks of the shutdown, I did laundry in our bathtub with my feet, which can only be described as a joyless task. It is amazing how much laundry a family of four still generates when they are hardly leaving the house.

In the early pandemic days, I worried my family wasn’t active enough. This was reinforced during a game of charades when one family member mistakenly acted out the song, “I’ve Been Sitting on the Railroad” instead of “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad.” Shortly thereafter, family walks became mandatory and longer.

For the most part, I’m impressed with the way my family has adapted to new activities. Mike successfully joined the ranks of the sourdough bread bakers. He and the boys play Dungeons & Dragons with a neighbour via FaceTime. My youngest son dug a hole as deep as he is tall in our tiny backyard. He jokes that other kids will return to school telling stories of how they learned to play guitar and wrote “Coronavirus the Musical,” but he’s going to tell everyone he just dug a hole. He’s actually done a lot more, including making me the beautiful Mother’s Day necklace I’m wearing in the picture accompanying this piece using lapis lazuli from his rock collection.

Like many, we’ve had a lot of low points over the last few weeks—but I will spare you the details of our internecine quarrels. We know we are fortunate that we are healthy, employed and able to work from home. Still, it is hard not being able to do important things like be with my mother, or mourn with friends who’ve recently lost parents. My mother recently had to go into full quarantine because three personal support workers from her residence tested positive for the Coronavirus. It is my understanding that they are well and no one else has tested positive, but this is still upsetting for everyone.

We are happy to have backyard social distancing visits with my mother-in-law, during which my boys regale her with jokes they research ahead of time. She has now twice told us how much she misses hugs, and it breaks my heart that we can’t give her one. On our last visit she said that as soon as this is over, she is going to run to the closest intersection and hug everyone she sees. This makes me imagine my mother-in-law in a photo like the iconic WW2 VJ day nurse and sailor image, only in this photo, she is the one dipping another reveller who is also out celebrating the end of COVID-19 times.

I hope everyone is well and I look forward to catching up in person!

The University of St. Michael’s College is keeping the members of all our honoured classes in mind. We look forward to the day when we gather again!

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Last year through our Grad Class Campaign, we asked all 2015 graduates to make a gift of $20.15 or any amount they could manage. This gift was used to help fund furniture in Kelly Library, and provide two student leadership awards to our graduating students. These awards were based on volunteerism in the local community, within U of T, and/or the St. Mike’s community. The St. Mike’s Young Alumni Committee (YAC) chose Jarvis Noronha and Anne Fard as the two recipients of these awards.

We would like to update you on our two winners below:

Jarvis Noronha

• Jarvis is in his 2nd year of his Masters in Science under the Department of Nutritional Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, U of T.
• This past year, he was the Community Outreach Coordinator with the Nutritional Sciences Graduate Students’ Union. He worked with another graduate student to organize and conduct various community outreach and fundraising events.
• The 2015 Grad Class Award has helped build Jarvis’ professional and personal life, and has been a humbling and important reminder to continue making efforts to engage with his community beyond undergrad.
• Jarvis is thankful to receive this award, as it helped reduce various financial burdens during his Masters. He has used the funds to help make small donations to various charity organizations as well.

Anne Fard

• Anne is finishing off her Masters in Science under the Department of Nutritional Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, U of T.
• She was accepted as a Research Analyst for Health Innovation as part of Bridging Research Innovation Globally in Health Technology (BRIGHT) International.
• She was chosen as a Fellow for Kaya Collaborative, an organization that works with young leaders who partner with local companies to help develop and instigate lasting impact within various communities in the Philippines.
• Anne is thankful to be a recipient of this award, as it helped her through her Masters, provided her with more confidence to pursue what is ahead, and also helped support her financially.

Graduated in June or November 2016? You can apply for the 2016 Grad Class Award HERE.